


The Sweet Hereafter

by blue_sun



Series: Twice A Year [3]
Category: Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, M/M, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Oral Sex, Pack Cuddles, Pack Dynamics, Shower Sex, Werewolf Politics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:15:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5062531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_sun/pseuds/blue_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angela answers the door at two in the morning to find Jacob, dripping wet, hunted, and on the run from Sam.<br/>Six years after 'Rubicon', life is almost sweet--except it’s that time of year again and Sam just can’t leave it alone. Life has a way of… well, getting in the way. Everybody’s got to grow up sometime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Twice A Year

Angela answered the door at two in the morning without putting on the hall light for fear of waking the twins, if they hadn’t already been roused by the banging.

It said something that her first encounter with the wolves of Washington state had been after dark, in a forest, catalysed by an attack, and ending in a stern conversation in a kitchen with three weary half-dressed Quileute about wolves, vampires, and the supernatural hazards of shapeshifting. With that as a precedent, when she opened the front door in the dead of night six years later to a dripping-wet Quileute wearing a hunted expression, neither of them gave a thought to the peculiarity. Angela peered up at Jacob through sleep-tousled hair and stood aside without a word. He all but fell inside.

Angela didn't comment on his near-slamming of the door behind him. Rubbing an eye with the sleeve of her flannel shirt, she watched him check all the windows in the small lounge room—yanking the curtains closed as he went. "What—"

"Don't ask."

“Take your jacket off at least. You’re dripping on the carpet.”

Jacob obligingly stripped off his wet clothes bar shorts and surrendered them. Angela carried them away into the laundry and threw hoodie and shirt into the dryer. The t-shirt was the one he slept in; had he come straight here from home? There was no sound of movement upstairs and no head poked over the banister when she looked up on the way back to the living room. Joshua and Isaac must still have been asleep.

Jacob was wearing a path into the carpet in front of the fireplace. She tracked his pacing with sleepy bemusement.

He’d closed the curtains to block out all the streetlight—or was it to block out the street itself? The bed of coals in the fireplace put out only the barest touch of heat and the faintest of red glows. Jacob didn’t seem to notice. The lounge was unlit; between the fireplace and the little lamp that was always on in the hallway there was just enough light to see that his expression was an uneasy mix of someone-kicked-my-puppy and bad-touched-by-the-icecream-man. Between that, the agitation, the isolationism… This was a familiar behaviour pattern, but she hadn’t seen it for a while: he didn’t feel safe.

What on God’s green earth could make a _werewolf_ nervous…?

Angela rested a shoulder on the doorframe to observe him for a moment longer, just to confirm her theory. The motion inched her oversized shirt up her thighs. Her brow furrowed at Jacob’s frantic, near panicked movements. Finally, she cleared her throat. "I'm asking.”

A pause in his pacing. "An _gie_..."

She cocked a hip, unmoved. “Jake, why are you all wet? And why are you dropping by at _two_ in the morning? Don’t get me wrong, I love that we’re still spontaneous, but what on _earth_?”

“I took a detour through the river,” he said distractedly. He peered into the gloom of the kitchen as if checking for lurkers. “It was the only way to douse the scent.”

“Douse the…”

“Is your mom still in Port Angeles?”

“Ssh. The boys are home. Yes, she’s still in Port Angeles. More tests. Jake, why were you ‘dousing the scent’? Is that vampire back?”

“No, no, the pack’s safe. If she does come back, she’s not our problem. The leeches can deal with her. It’s…” He cast another worried glance towards the front door and perched his tall frame awkwardly on the arm of the couch. "Do you know what date it is?" he asked morosely.

She frowned at the wooden floor by his (bare) feet. "Yes, but... _oh_ , Jake." Her eyes snapped up to his face.

He nodded miserably.

"I thought you were supposed to come here for those days," she said gently.

" _These_ days," he corrected with a hint of a whimper.

She went to him with a sigh, socks scuffing on the wooden floor. The couch was low enough that, sitting on the arm, his long legs splayed out in a vee. He whined as Angela stepped between them to cup his face.

"What happened this time?"

His bottom lip twisted up and long arms wrapped around her waist so he could bury his face in her neck. "An _gie_..."

Angela’s lips twitched up. This was classic Jake for _'I don't walk to talk about it; it's embarrassing/weird/stupid'_.

"Jacob."

He shook his head stubbornly and hugged her tighter. Feeling put-upon, she sighed and rested a hand on a broad bare shoulder, combing the other through the short soft hair at the base of his neck. Her fingers touched something rough and crackly. Frowning, she combed through his hair again. This time she came out with a leaf.

She lifted it up to eye-level, twirling it in her fingertips. "Jake, what did they do _this time_?"

He mumbled something into her shirt.

Mouth twisted, she leant back to see his face, ignoring how the speech had puffed little breaths onto her collarbone. "Can't hear you."

"An _gie_..."

She sighed. Enough with the _whining_. She tapped a finger on his shoulder. "Come on Jake. Spill. What happened?"

He shifted his grip on her waist. Angela waited for an answer. What she didn't expect was a hot breath up her neck and a kiss to her jaw.

"You smell good," he muttered, pulling her closer.

Angela resisted the urge to smack him on the head. "Jake, snap out of it. _Stay with me here_. Someone was after you, you went through the river… What happened?" Lips ghosted across her throat. One of his hands began palming circles on her back. Angela sighed and shifted her weight, finger-combing messy hair out of her face. Well, what did she expect? It _was_ a rut.

That, too, had figured in serious kitchen conversations, although much much later. It had surprised her, the concept that male wolves went through heat cycles too, but she figured that it was kind of like breeding season: females got hot, males just got 'the urge'. Which was just _great_ really, and she wished she'd known that _before_ she agreed to Ben’s plan to get some moonlight photos in the middle of the Olympic Forest one night six years ago. But no one had told _her_ had they?

It'd turned out fine in the end. But that wasn't the worst of it, oh no: the worst part was where the other members of his pack got interested. _Really_ interested, if you got the picture… Which _probably_ explained why he was here, come to that.

"Jake?"

" _Yes_?"

She fought to stay focused. Werewolf or not, that voice going all low and sexy still made her knees weak. "Did Embry and Quil try—"

He barked a laugh, keeping his face close to her neck. "Ah, no. Not _this_ time."

She huffed in frustration. That was another thing that annoyed her about the heat: monosyllabic or incredibly short and uninformative answers.

One of his large hands had slipped down her back to slide along the backs of her thighs, calluses rasping along her skin and raising goosebumps in their wake. "I love this shirt," he mouthed against her collarbone.

"Ja-Jake, please. Help me out here. _What happened_ _?_ "

"Say 'please' again."

"Okay, _please_. ' _Please'_ tell me what happened."

He didn't answer. Scowling, Angela grabbed a handful of hair and tugged his head back. Eyes hotter than should've been legal, he smirked up at her, thoroughly uninterested in anything she had to say.

" ** _Jake_**."

He pouted and rolled his eyes but answered as commanded. "Sam."

" _Sam_? _Sam_ happened?"

Jake nodded and resumed his original occupation, her grip on his hair loosened by surprise. Angela tried to ignore the teeth nibbling deliciously on her neck, and think. The idea of the Alpha looming over Jake sent a shudder she wasn’t entirely sure was revulsion go through her. She pushed it back, trying to breathe deeply. Sam. Okay. Sam. She could deal with that. She thought.

Jacob made a noise in his throat somewhere between a moan and a growl and pressed closer to her. She was practically sitting on his lap now, Jake's disinterest in anything other than _them_ very obvious.

Mind going foggy, she forcibly uncurled her fingers and pushed back on his shoulders. "Jake, no. I went there _once_. _I have work tomorrow_."

The arms locked around her waist didn't budge. "Skip it."

“I can’t. I’m on opening. I have the keys and everything—”

He latched onto her sternum. Resistance was futile. Her arms were getting weaker by the second, though she kept pushing on his shoulders.

Jake chuckled at her efforts, deep and dark, and laughed outright when she scowled at his amusement.

"Jake, seriously!" She leant back. It didn't work. He had half a foot of height on her; there was no way she could lean away far enough to escape. One of his hands was latched onto her hip like a workshop vice; the other was slowly undoing the buttons of her shirt.

"I mean it: _stop_. I'm not encouraging this heat. You know _perfectly well_ you can _wait it out_. As your girlfriend, I'm recommending what's _best for you_."

He laughed, sliding a finger down the exposed skin between her breasts. "Yeah, but where's the fun in that? Besides: as my _girlfriend_ shouldn't you enjoy this as much as me?"

She wriggled uncomfortably, little fizzles running up and down her spine making her nerves tingle pleasantly. "Well, yeah, but--"

"Okay then. _Enjoy_ it." Abandoning the buttons, he slid the second hand down her legs and picked her up, pulling her onto his lap. Angela scowled. It was times like this she really hated being shorter than someone for a change. She _really_ hated... _ooh_ but she didn't hate _that._

A tiny chuckle vibrated against her skin as she unconsciously arched her neck into his mouth, kneading his shoulders. Oh, to hell with it. Catching his lower lip playfully between her teeth, she grinned at him. Jake snorted and surged into the kiss.

The first knock on the door went unheard. The second, not so much. Jake went rigid and jerkily turned his head to stare over her shoulder at the closed front door.

Clearly he could see – or smell – something she couldn't, although as a human, that wasn't surprising. For a moment, Angela couldn't work out why he looked so damn freaked out. Well, as freaked out as a half-naked werewolf with a raging hard-on could look.

The pounding on the door resumed, a distinct edge to the sound. If it kept up, it would wake the boys.

Prying Jake's suddenly pliable arms off her body, Angela stood unsteadily and wiped her mouth. Anxiety attack or not, the werewolf snorted at that.

Angela poked him in the chest. "Stay," she hissed. "I'm going find out just how bad this is." Leaving Jake to sit – huddle – on the couch, she stepped into the hallway.

"It's bad," he informed her from his protective hunch among the couch cushions. His eyes bored into the wall as though he could see through it to the door. (Still no sound of movement from upstairs; hopefully, Joshua would be asleep with his headphones on again, and Isaac slept like the dead.) Angela shook her head, tumbling her hair back over her forehead. She puffed at it distractedly and opened the door.

Sam blinked at her, unburying his hands from his pockets. "Angela." He actually sounded surprised. (Funny, considering it was _her_ house.)

Angela fought the automatic urge to clutch the sleepshirt tighter to her body as yellowed eyes skimmed her up and down. The werewolf’s nostrils flared.

"Sam, what are you doing here?" she asked, more to gauge the situation than anything else. Almost four years of this sort of thing had taught her a few tricks. “Pounding on the door like that; you could've woken the boys.”

The question seemed to throw Sam.

Angela took the opportunity to take in his state of dress... or _un_ dress. The standard ratty jeans were no surprise, but she was caught off-guard by the lack of, well, _shirt_. Sam had thrown on an unzipped fleece-lined jacket, but under that he was bare-chested. She glanced over her shoulder into the shadowy lounge room, where she could make out the rough shape of her boyfriend. Okay, so maybe she had underestimated the situation. Sam usually made sure he was _fully clothed_ before leaving La Push as a human.

Less than the wolves blithely displayed on a normal day, the strip of bare chest was nevertheless distracting. She’d be lying if she said she’d never had an idle thought about the Alpha, but at the moment he was here to harass her partner. Right. Yes. Priorities. More important things to do and all that… She spared a thought for Emily, but Sam was talking.

"—looking for..." He trailed off.

Angela took a disconcerted step back; was he _scenting the air_?

The Alpha seemed to steady himself. "Jacob, actually."

"Yeah, I'll bet."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

Angela wasn't intimidated, exactly, but she inched a hand up the door just the same. "Sam, I'm not an idiot. I _do_ know what time of year it is."

He smiled easily. "Okay, good. Then you know Jacob should—"

"What?" she asked flatly. "He should _what_ , Sam? You should leave."

The light front the street-lamp behind him threw his angular face into shadow, but the gloom didn't stop Angela from seeing his eyes darken. "Angela, you _really_ —"

" **Now** , Sam. I've got a pretty good idea of what's going through your mind, and _no:_ that's _not_ going to happen.” Angela clenched her jaw against the niggling fear as Sam started to tense up, face hardening.

" _What's_ not going to happen, Angie?" he asked, silk over steel.

Jake’s nickname for her in Sam’s voice sent a shiver through her. "You're _not_. _Getting_. _Jake_. _Sam_. Not now, not over my unconscious body. For Pete’s sake, Sam, you’re pack leader.” Her voice jumped, exasperation getting the better of her. She lowered her volume with a glance at the ceiling. “You’re supposed to _protect_ these boys, not take advantage of them.”

“Take _advantage_ —” He seemed to _loom_ as his ire sparked, increasing in height.

Angela made to close the door but Sam hesitated. He didn’t want to acquire his aim by force? Or he was starting to fight the pull. That was good—if she could stall for long enough…

The pack was cautious of her. For reasons unknown (that Swan girl sowing dumb ideas into humans?) Angela could, _and would_ , face down the pack – or an angry wolf (coughPaulcough) – to accomplish a goal. (Or maybe Angela was just crazy. Evidence supported the theory: Exhibit A, whipping Embry once in fooseball through beginner’s luck and gloating about it before her preacher’s-daughter sensibilities kicked in and she had the grace to look ashamed.)

But if Angela had known the pack felt this way, right then she’d have laughed herself into hysteria. She didn’t feel scary. She felt like whimpering and heading for the hills, and Sam wasn’t giving up easily enough for her comfort.

If he had been fighting, he’d given in. Staring down with something bordering contempt in his black eyes, he hissed, "He’s pack. _My_ pack. You’re human. You're in no position to deny me _anything_." One step forward with a bit of a lean to it put him just about eye-level with Angela.

She stared levelly back, dark eyes cool. At the very least she wouldn't _show_ fear.

"I _know_ he's here, Angela; I tracked him. _Move_."

Her chin jerked out defiantly. "No."

Sam's eyes bored angrily into hers. His very outline seemed to vibrate in the cool night air.

Angela stood her ground, shivering but defiant. "I'm _not_ moving Sam. Leave."

His lip lifted in a snarl, face twisting. His fist was at shoulder level before she knew he had moved it.

A low growl rumbled through the air against Angela’s back. Sam's eyes snapped up over her shoulder, his rictus of anger vanishing. Jake – human, presumably – stood in the hallway behind her; she didn't have to look to know.

Sam straightened minutely. Jake had to be staring him down over her shoulder, daring him to throw the punch. She fought the urge to flinch and stood tall, all her faith resting on Jake. If Sam hit her, she’d do more than go flying: he might very well cave in her skull even before she hit the wall. God help her if she hadn’t trusted Jake enough to put her life in his hands. Wolves were very protective of their mates, and she supposed that meant her. Hoped, anyway.

The rumbling drew out, Sam straightening by degrees. Angela was relieved to note the animalistic shadow in his eyes was fading. He seemed to be getting a handle on himself again. Only...

A strange expression took shape. Angela frowned. Something about this new face made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Sam stared down at her. She had the uncomfortable feeling he was studying her. Glancing over her shoulder, he stepped closer.

Attention sharply focused on him, she noted vaguely that the timbre of the rumble at her back had altered incrementally. Sam's presence wasn't threatening now, it was... something else. She couldn't identify it. A slight noise behind her: skin on wood. Jake drew closer.

Angela was hyperaware, every hair standing on end, straining to hear any hint of movement upstairs that might indicate one of the twins was awake and about to walk into a showdown.

Sam was studying her and Jake both now, gaze flicking over her head to communicate something to his Beta and then back down over Angela. The growl wavered up in pitch and then down again.

"Fine," Sam breathed, still staring over her head.

Angela felt abruptly cold; goosebumps fled down her spine as a chill reminded her that her shirt ended at mid-thigh and was unbuttoned down to her ribs. She'd forgotten completely. Hand on the door, she suddenly wanted to take a step back--away from Sam and his weirdly intense eyes.

Sam took another step and her body did it instinctively. A smile ghosted across the Alpha’s lips at the reaction. His eyes went to Jake's and his tongue flicked out to wet his lips, almost nervously.

" _Whatever it takes_ ," he murmured to himself.

Angela twitched her head. Whatever _what_ took? Sam's dropped back to hers. The shade of a smirk appeared. Angela took another small – _involuntary_ – step back. Regardless, he was still too close for her continuing peace of mind. Way too close.

Her concern was compounded when he closed the already narrow distance between them with a determined expression. Jake’s growl still vibrated in the air, only in a completely different tenor. He sounded... pleased. Approving?

Angela froze. What just happened? Wait: Alpha, Beta... cycles... Jake’s cycle timed in once every six months—and as a Beta, his cycle was synced with the Alpha’s. Jake was in rut because Sam was(, because Leah was), and when _Jake_ was in rut, he was irrational, aggressive… and single-minded.

Angela's eyes widened. "Sam, wait, no, back up! That's not—" She backed away. "Sam, quit it! _I mean it_. We can talk about this—maybe tomorrow, over coffee? Do it the right way, like adults. Would you…would you back up, please? I'm not _that kind_ of barrier, I don’t…it's... Jake, help..." Her escape route ran out, blocked by a broad chest.

 

Sam licked his lips. If the only way to get Jacob off guard – to ‘ _get Jacob’_ period – was to go through Angela, well... he could deal with that. She squeaked cutely as she ran out of places to back up to. Yeah, he could deal with that.

He wrapped a hand gently around her chin.

"You might as well give up, _Ange_." He said her name so low it was a breath of hot air on her lips. “ ‘ _Submit’_.”

Behind her, so lowly she might not have heard it, Jacob whispered, “You can say no if you want to.”

Angela swallowed hard. In front of her, Sam was intent, so close that she must have felt the heat radiating off him. She stared up at him with the look of a cornered animal. He could practically see the thoughts as they crawled through her mind:

She could say no. And Sam… Sam would leave. Jacob’s forehead butted the back of her skull gently; Sam looked at him sharply. If she said no—if she brought up Emily, Sam would leave. He’d be angry, and uncomfortable, and the whole pack would be on edge for a month before Angela, Emily, Jacob, and Sam sat down around a table and had a horrendous, needful adult conversation over that coffee Angela had suggested—but he would leave.

Her lips trembled for a moment before she pressed them together tightly. Her knuckles turned white against her thighs.

Sam snorted softly and turned her head to the side so he could whisper in her ear. _"_ You _can_ say no. But I want him, Angela; and if it comes to that, I want you too."

Jacob’s chuckle was half laughter, half growl. Pushing Sam’s hand aside, Jacob slid a hand down Angela’s stomach and dipped two fingers past the elastic of her panties. She bucked into them. Nostrils flaring, she tugged her chin from Sam’s grip and pressed back into Jacob. He whimpered, nuzzling into her hair.

When she spoke, her voice was so rough it was barely recognisable. “Okay."

 


	2. Coyote Blue

Waking up was a slow process. Sam wasn't sure he _wanted_ to wake up. He was comfortable the way he was.

That is, it didn't smell like home, the bed was different, and there was a hard lump under his shoulder, but none of that mattered. It was comfortable. Clearly his wolf didn't have a problem with it either. If it weren’t a wolf, he could have sworn it would have been rumbling with contentment.

Faint noises drifted in through what he assumed was an open door (because he wasn't going to bother opening his eyes to confirm). A pleasant lethargy suffused his whole body as if he’d been lying in the sun. The room, if strange, still held a familiar musky smell of warm bodies and laundry detergent. Sam mentally shrugged and shifted, shoving the lump away and settling into the softness of the mattress. Yep, he was going back to sleep.

The lump stirred and muttered. Sam grumbled at it and hit out, cuffing a head lightly. Emily never stayed abed after sunup and their dog knew better than to jump up on the bed, but there were always exceptions.

The movement stopped; the sounds from outside momentarily paused. They resumed after a moment. The smell of coffee drifted into the room. Maybe waking up wasn't such a bad idea. Lazily, he opened his eyes. For a moment, the surroundings were confusing. He recognised it as Angela's house. This room, with its buttery yellow walls and treated pine furniture, was the downstairs guest bedroom. But—

 

_"Nearest bedroom?"_

_"Spare," came the distracted reply, accompanied by an arm thrown out in the appropriate direction. Well, Sam would be distracted too if Jake was doing that to_ his _neck._

 

That didn't explain why he was naked – albeit covered by the sheets – or why Angela’s mother wasn’t staring at them from the doorway demanding what debauched things he’d been doing to be so blissfully post-coital in her guest bedroom. (Or worse, the twins.) Only he seemed to think there might be an explanation for that in his muddled memories too:

 

_"Where's your mother?"_

_"She's, um... she's in hospital. Overnight observation; she had another episode." The answer was a whisper whittled down to almost nothing. Angela dropped her eyes. Shooting Sam a scowl, Jacob lifted her face and kissed her._

 

Yep, there it was. Only, there was a problem running through all of these memories and fuzzy visions.

"Shit." A sinking feeling in his stomach, Sam rolled over.

Jacob, bare back giving away his own state of dress and sheets pulled up to his waist, muttered something unintelligible and kicked out half-heartedly.

Not the dog. Not Sam’s own bed, not his own house, and no sign of Emily to explain that this was all some crazy double-dating-drank-too-much-afterparty…

Oh no. He _didn't_. Did he? Sam groaned as his body informed him that yes, in fact, he _did_. Enthusiastically. He grimaced and flung his head back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling. Fuck.

What did Leah say? “Coyote’d”? Waking up somewhere you really wish you hadn’t? He hadn’t pried too deeply into the story behind that one, but he got the gist.

This went beyond 'Oops.' How the hell was he supposed to explain this to Emily? He hadn't even _mentioned_ that his affection for his Beta went kind of beyond beers and a football game on a Saturday night. Sure, he wanted Jacob (enough to shove him into a tree and just about assault him, apparently). But he hadn't planned on _jumping_ the guy, much less dragging his de facto mate into the mess.

Oh: Angela.

Hell. She was going to be _pissed_.

In a rare saving grace (an _exceedingly_ rare breed right at the moment) the human was nowhere to be seen. Which was good: Sam thought he needed a few more minutes before he could actually face up to her tearing him one for the history books. Or crying. God forbid she cried.

 ...

Scalding cup of coffee in her hand, Angela pulled the camisole down where it had ridden up her stomach and headed back to the bedroom. Sam or no, it was wake up time for a certain werewolf. If she didn't wake him up, he'd quite happily sleep all day and she hadn't lied: she really had to go to work. But while she might have been on the opening shift today, the other duty librarian – Margaret _dearest_ – could survive without her for a few more minutes. That would give Margaret time to sit in her snooty silver hybrid and listening to that ‘Finding Inner Tranquility’ CD Angela had (only slightly mean-spiritedly) gotten her as a Christmas ‘gift’ last year. Maybe if she wasn’t such an old crone, Angela wouldn’t have listened to the twins when they cheekily shoved the CD into her hands and told her it was already paid for.

Angela winced and walked a little slower as a twinge ran up her spine. Hormonal werewolves ought to come with warning labels. The side effects were _not_ nice the morning after, however much fun they were at the time. Thus the reason she usually stuck Jake on the couch with a series of movies and made him focus on the storyline. A difficult challenge, yes; she found the Extended Editions of the _Lord of the Rings_ Trilogy usually did the trick. She'd tried him on the _Ginger Snaps_ series once for an experiment with... interesting results. Ever since, she’d stuck to _Lord of the Rings_. Safer. Far, far less awkward explaining to do to the boys and last-minute arranging for them to have a sleep-over with their school friends.

During the day Jacob'd mope around while Angela was at work. Then she'd come home, struggle through making dinner while fending him off. Movies. Sleep. And then they'd go through it all again. For the four or five days the rut lasted. _Yeesh_ , she was going to be tired by the end of the week: he was always worse if she gave in early on.

She wasn’t sure what the other boys did during rut. Maybe once they’d survived this, she’d ask Sam; it seemed like she— _they_ , needed to do a little more research if this pin-the-wolf-in-the-tail nonsense was going to stop. The couple of times she'd had an 'oh, what the hell' reaction, she'd spent one week making sick calls to work feigning an early flu, and another wincing when she moved too quickly.

Enjoying the little spark of warmth that lit in low in her belly with those memories, Angela pushed messy morning hair out of her eyes and smothered a yawn. Now was _not_ the time to be tired. Blinking sleepily, she turned to the guest room door, the old wood worn smooth and fine beneath her bare feet. She'd ditched the sleep-shirt early that morning when she woke up and twigged to the idea that the shirt (lying on the floor outside the spare room door along with various items of clothing she _knew_ weren't hers) probably wasn’t the securest thing to walk around the house in with two werewolves in the vicinity. The trade-up was a camisole and a set of soft blue pajama pants. Much more sensible—and defensible.

Not to mention less conspicuous when the twins woke up, bounded down the stairs, then immediately grinned at the jacket hanging by the door. They would have so many questions when they got home from school. Angela ran through the roster of phone numbers as she walked; the Rothsteins had taken the boys a month ago; they were barred from the Burr house; when did they last stay with the Nelsons?

Another twinge, and the low rumble of voices from the bedroom.

She rolled dark eyes and put up a theatrical grumble. "Honestly. Big hands, big feet, big... ego."

The last bit was good-naturedly crisp. Jake had opened one eye over the pillow and put up a wide, lazy grin, like a dog in the sun. If he’d had a tail, she’d have expected it to be thumping slowly on the quilt. He stretched a hand towards the cup, making infantile grasping motions.

Angela held it protectively to her chest. "Oh no! You can go get your _own_ coffee." Despite the reprimand she couldn’t push the grin off her face at the picture the men made. Which, she supposed, rather ruined the effect. Truth be told, when Jake sat up and gave her 'the Look', she didn't think a sterner tone would have made much of a difference.

There were a few ‘Looks’. This one was the half smile, half puppy-dog-eyes stir-well-and-serve-with-extra-honey Look that he _knew_ would coerce her out of her coffee. _How_ he knew, she'd never understand – she supposed it was something he practiced when she wasn't looking – but work it did, without fail.

"Oh for— _fine_. Here." Rolling her eyes, she handed over the coffee cup before doing an about-face and heading back to the kitchen. "Talk about a pity party. If you leave hair in that bed, I swear to Jesus, you’re vacuuming."

Returning a few moments later with a new mug of ambrosia, she halted in the doorway, a smile spreading across her lips. "Sam, are you blushing?"


	3. Over Easy

Angela and Jacob left the room to let Sam get dressed. Angela, as if sensing Sam’s distress, put his jeans and a shirt on the end of the bed without comment.

For a long time, Sam sat with his hands in his lap just staring at the clothes. From around the stairs and down the hall he heard muffled conversation, and then the soft clinks of kitchenware being moved around. A coffee maker gurgled. Somewhere down the street, a dog was barking (too many wolves?) and a car started up.

He couldn’t just sit here. And he was too much of an adult to sneak out the front door.

The shirt was washed-soft cotton and it smelled like Jacob. Sam's jeans were muddy around the hems and they smelled like—

 

“I’m sorry,” he said when he walked into the kitchen.

Angela was making eggs. She half-turned, a spatula in one hand, and then looked at Jacob. He sipped his coffee.

“Would you like your eggs fried or scrambled?” Angela said gently.

 _Unfertilised,_ retorted a voice in Sam’s head that felt like Paul’s. Sam blanched. Oh God, did they use—

“We didn’t, but Ange has an implant anyway,” Jacob said into his mug.

Not only was Sam internalising Paul, but Jacob was too. Sam shot a scowl at him. Making eye contact was a mistake: more bits of the night came back.

Feeling light-headed, he put a hand on the kitchen counter.

“Last night was a fair work-out,” Jacob observed. Now he’d raised his head, Sam noticed a wariness to his expression. A certain guarded alertness Sam hadn’t seen since the last time Angela disagreed with Paul on something. He had, Sam noticed, taken up a post against the counter between Angela and the inside door – and Sam – instead of beside her where he normally leaned.

He held Sam’s gaze for a long moment, and then turned away to a loaf of bread on the counter. “You should eat. Want toast?”

“Please,” Sam said, finally wrangling something like his normal voice. “I’ll take eggs however you cook them, Ange.”

The sound of the nickname in his own voice make him cringe. Angela nodded to the kitchen table without looking back at him. Sam took a seat awkwardly.

He declined a cup of coffee from Jacob; thanked him for a glass of juice.

At length, Angela slid a plate of eggs onto the table in front of Sam and sat down opposite him with a mug of fruity tea. Jacob spun a chair backwards and straddled it, tossing a piece of toast on top of Sam’s eggs.

Ignoring Sam’s pained look, he buttered two more slices. Angela accepted one. Sam tried not to notice the flash of white teeth as she bit into it. Her free hand rested on the table between her and Jacob. Jacob gnawed absently on the second slice, his eyes on the chore roster on the wall.

Sam watched his pinkie curl around Angela’s; the careless way her fingers twitched apart to make room for it. He didn’t feel so much like eating anymore.

His stomach snarled its displeasure.

“So where do we go from here?” Angela said quietly. Her eyes traced the glyphs Sam’s fork was carving listlessly into his eggs. Her shoulders had tightened up; mouth too, as if putting on clothes had put a distance between them and the detached ease of that morning which was insurmountable and irreconcilable. Sam put a little more vigour into picking at the eggs. Jacob leant over and rested his forehead against her temple. She didn’t stop him.

“I don’t know,” Sam began frankly, “I—” The words stuck in his throat.

Angela’s brown eyes bored into his.

He dropped his gaze to the plate and pushed them through. “I can’t say I didn’t want it to happen. But—I don’t regret that it did.” He glanced up from beneath his brows to gauge how that admission went over.

Angela was still watching him, her hands loosely linked on the old fake-stone veneer. Jacob pressed a kiss to her temple but his eyes were on Sam.

 

 

Seth was waiting for Sam when he got home. From the look of him, he hadn’t slept all night. He was scruffy with fatigue – hair pulled out at odd angles, mud on the seat of his shorts – but his eyes were awake and alert.

“Sam! We were looking for you all morning. The guys on patrol this morning—”

 _Patrol_ , he said, as if Sam didn’t know what he really meant. As if they _all_ wouldn’t know as soon as they were all wolf-shape together again.

“—Quil and Embry, up on the northern border, they found something.”

He looked very small and young with his bare feet, muddy knees, chewed nails. Nothing like the rest yet.

Rising up over all the rest of the shitfight today had been came a surge of protective instinct that caught Sam off guard.

“Sam,” Seth said, “they said it smells like vampire.”

And that, Sam thought, was as good a reason not to think about Jacob or Angela or the Rut as any other.

 

 

Jacob was in seclusion at Angela’s for the rest of the week. He came out to run patrols with other members of the pack but he studiously avoided Sam, and since this was Rut Week none of the wolves was too inclined to get too much up into each other’s personal space. Sam had to be content crossing Jacob’s trail every now and then in the forest--thicker and more common now with doubled patrols.

Sam stayed away anyway. He didn’t know how he felt about any of it, but the only text he got from Jacob (‘everything 5x5; c u Sunday’) didn’t make any mention of going around to talk things through.

So he stayed away.

He investigated the vampire trail (cold). He disciplined the pack (rowdy and on heat) and sent them home when necessary. He helped Emily prepare for the pack’s three-year anniversary cook-out.

It worried him to pretend everything was fine when they didn’t know why they’d smelled vampire on the border line, but the cook-out had been planned for weeks and nobody had found any trace of vampires since the night—

“You know if you scowl like that, you’ll get stuck when the wind changes,” Emily teased.

Sam shook himself out of his reverie. He was standing in the cabin kitchen holding a bag of bread rolls, and Emily had a tinfoil-covered plate she was holding out to him.

“Sorry,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Pack stuff. Nothing serious. Don’t stress about it.”

Emily smiled too. “Hey, Mister, you might be functionally immortal, but you’re still the one who’s going to give yourself wrinkles. You’ve been scowling into space for a week now. Rut’s over, that bear in the park’s moved off… Let’s just relax and be a family for a while, yeah?”

“Of course, you’re right.” Shaking his head, Sam kissed her again. “That’s why I love you.”

“Hah. You love me because I cook well,” Emily retorted, putting the plate into the oven herself and retrieving a plate of meat from the fridge.

Sam grabbed the pack of fire-starter cubes and followed her. “No, that’s why the rest of the guys love you. I love you because you’re amazing.”

She good-naturedly used that to leverage him into making a run to the convenience store for several pints of ice cream. Sam complied with only a minimum of complaint.

Driving back, he was unnerved to find himself getting wound up tighter and tighter as he turned onto the road to the cabin. Were Jacob and Angela still coming? What would they say—what would he say to Emily if they didn’t? Singly and in pairs, the pack showed up to play with fire and help out with prep.

What is things were different now? How was he supposed to act? He was still pondering that when Jacob and Angela pulled up in the Rabbit.

But Jacob slapped him on the shoulder and shoved a case of drinks into his arms. (He still smelled like—) Angela was three steps behind with a stack of covered dishes.

“Carbonada, and churros with _dulce de leche_ ,” she said; “Mom’s recipe,” and kissed Sam on the cheek. She left him standing in the front door on her way to find Emily. Like always. Like normal.

The case felt lighter. The hoots and laughter from out back a little louder.

Hoisting the case, Sam kicked the door shut and carried the sodas back to the troops.


	4. Cormorant's Rest

The library was mostly empty when Sam ducked in out of the rain. He shook water out of his hair and offered the woman watching disapprovingly from the circulation desk an apologetic grin. “Is it raining dogs out there, or what?”

The woman sniffed, rolling her eyes expressively, and went back to abusing her keyboard. Clearly the mish-mash of books stacked at her elbow rated higher than a lost-looking Native. Or maybe the shirt collar she sported - high and stiff as a priest’s - was choking the good humour out of her.

‘Touchy.’ Sam raked wet hair out of his eyes and looked around. A few times before he’d been in the Forks Memorial Library, but not recently. He made a face. Angela’s scent was all over; how was he supposed to locate her? He could wander around for a while – and leave Jacob MIA – or…

The librarian made a noise like a cat with a hairball. Sam looked over just in time to see her drop her eyes back to the keyboard.

… he could irritate the staff and find her all in one go. He grinned. Option B it was. “Angela Weber?”

The woman, dark-haired and dark-eyed but clearly not Angela, opened her mouth to say something snappy about being Margaret Rabinowski not Angela Weber but Sam was on edge. Something was up with the bloodsuckers, and having one of his pack – _Jacob_ – missing right now was making him a little… impatient.

“Do you know where I could _find_ her?”

She did look cheated as she pointed out a distant section of the building. “Stacks. Science Theory.” Her front teeth were very prominent when she spoke, and Sam had a sudden flash of a sour-faced, buck-toothed little girl being teased mercilessly.

“Thanks.”

Her reply was exactly the sour look he’d imagined. He half-expected her to put a finger to her mouth and _‘Shush!’_ him as he left.

Angela was balanced on a wheeled cube in the very depths of the library. As Sam approached she slid a book from a stack in her arms onto a shelf above head height.

“School group.”

Sam stopped short. She hadn’t looked around. How—?

“Heard you. Talking to Mags– sorry, _‘Margaret’_ at the front desk. You’re suave, _hombre_. Very suave.” She straightened two paperbacks against each other and nudged them onto a shelf.

Propping one foot on the cube, Sam offered a grin borrowed directly from Seth. “Worth it, though, wasn’t it? Is this is the ‘work’ part of those four-letter words you love?”

Angela shook her head, smiling, and shelved her last book. “Yes, this is the work part. And I hope you’re happy: she’s going to be breathing down my neck for the next week about you two.” Turning on the cube, she propped a hand on her hip.

Sam hid a chuckle in a cough; he hadn’t seen Angela without her glasses before, although Jacob had photos. They surfaced every time Quil rambled too long about Claire. Sam thought her glasses might’ve made her eyes look bigger, but apparently not. He looked over the rest of her so he didn’t stare: ID card on a lanyard over a little purple vest, white button-down with rolled-up sleeves underneath it, and a pen tucked behind her ear. It was cute, in a _cuddle-me-or-I’ll-start-alphabetising_ kind of way.

“Trying your luck for ‘Cute Nerd of the Year’?”

Angela stuck the tip of her tongue out. “I’ll have you know I’m 2IC to the Head Librarian.”

“Ange, there are only two librarians. You, and the dread Rabbit of Caerbannog out front. Was Jake here today?”

“Not today.” She smiled mischievously. “Have you lost him again? And there are three librarians, thank-you. My boss is Lorna; I’m the second. The _third_ is Margaret.” She grimaced. “Hence the antipathy. I’ve got seniority by four months—plus, you know, I’ve lived here my whole life. She’s been working longer, but I’ve been working _here_ longer…. It itches at her. I’ve tried talking it out with her but she’s just—” Angela coloured and coughed. “So you’re looking for Jake?”

“Colin and Embry picked up the vampire's trail again early this morning. I haven’t seen Jacob since he left patrol yesterday. Know where he might be? I’d track him, but that last drenching washed away the trails.”

“And that’s a problem, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Angela bit her lip. “He said he had something he had to do in Port Angeles. He didn’t tell me what. But he should be back by now…?” Smiling at the face Sam pulled, she stepped off the cube. “Give me a minute and I’ll come help you look for him. Better yet, help _me_ put away the orphans—mis-shelves,” she clarified, seeing Sam’s bemusement. She plonked a pile of books from beside the cube into his arms and picked up the rest herself. “We call them orphans. Help _me_ find their homes, and I’ll be able to help _you_ sooner.”

Choosing to ignore what the Alpha muttered about not needing ‘help’, she sauntered deeper into the shelves. (Sam hadn’t thought that possible with a building this small.) Her shirt stuck down at the back like the flash of a white-tailed deer through the brush. The wolf approved of that thought with something like carnivorous amusement.

It only took ten minutes to deal with the rest of the stack.

“Doneskis! Oh—these two. Hmm… they should really be rebound,” she said, examining their scuffed spines. “Good catch, Rex.” She took them from Sam and trotted away.

Following, Sam discovered yet another tucked-away door he hadn’t seen last time. Obviously the librarians had half a country hidden away back here. Angela took the books through the door. A minute later she reappeared with her glasses and lanyard, a blue windbreaker over one arm.

“So: Jake.” She cocked her head as though listening to some far-off sound. “Hmm… have you tried Cormorant’s Rest?”

“Why would he be at Cormorant’s Rest?” The unofficial lookout was a little way north of La Push, a clearing atop a small spur that jutted into the sea. The clearing was fronted by a steep hill overrun with seabirds during the breeding season, but quiet and secluded in the off-season.

Angela went pink around the ears. “It was where we went after our first proper date,” she offered shyly. “Anyway, if he’s gone AWOL but didn’t leave a note, that’s where he’ll be. Lay on, Macduff. You brought your truck, right? Can I get a lift with you? We can leave my car here, and I’ll cycle over tomorrow and pick it up.”

Sam agreed. While she paused to check in with Margaret, he went on ahead, fording through lake-like puddles in the parking lot. Angela didn’t seem to  notice them when she jogged to catch up.

Then again, Sam thought wryly, he _had_ seen Angela laugh madly when it bucketed down rain in absolute torrents and drag Jake outside to stand in said torrents—to the werewolf’s vehement disgust. _Rain is rain_ , Jacob said, and it would still be there tomorrow, probably in similar quantities. It was just _water_ , Jesus Christ.

Gravel crunching beneath their feet as they headed for Sam’s truck, the Alpha had to agree. But it never seemed to bother Angela. After a while, it hadn’t bothered Jacob either. Maybe it was the bliss she radiated whenever it rained—the euphoric expression as she stood there and got drenched.

“Jacob’s right, you know: you’re a strange one,” he mumbled, watching Angela – her boots dangling from one hand – jump barefoot into puddles.

She laughed like a kid as muddy water splashed everywhere. “ _You_ spend a year in Tucson and then see if this doesn’t feel like Heaven.”

“The first time your mom got sick?”

“When I was a kid, yeah. Dad… well, Mom hit a rough patch and Dad thought it would be better if the twins and I lived with our aunt for a while. It’s the longest I’ve been away from here except for college.”

Shoving his hands into his pockets, Sam chewed the inside of his cheek. “My dad ran off with a woman he’d known for two weeks,” he admitted.

“I never knew that.”

Sam looked sideways. She'd had tilted her head to look at him. Not for the first time, Sam noticed they were almost the same height. Her big brown eyes, lighter than Emily’s, were nearly level with his. He cleared his throat. “I was five. I’d never been so angry with someone—”

He broke off, annoyed with himself.

“What was he like?”

Sam laughed. It was a dry sound, like branches burning. “I’d like to say he was a good man, but he wasn’t. He was a coward--a bully and a drunk. Part of me was… glad to see him go. But he wasn’t always like that.” Sam had been frowning into space; now he smiled at Angela. “You know, when I was a little kid he used to walk with me in the woods, pointing out things, telling me their stories. When we went to festivals, he’d lift me onto his shoulders so I could see over the crowd.”

“Sounds like a good childhood.”

“It was great. Until he got fired from the sawmill, and everything just sort of… started spiralling.”

“But you were all lined up for a scholarship, right? Before the change? So you picked yourself up.”

“Yeah, it took a while,” Sam conceded, “and I hated him for it, but we got through it. I kind of… threw myself into school. That was my escape.”

“When Dad sent us away to Tucson,” Angela said slowly,” I couldn’t decide who I hated more: him for sending us away, or Mom for letting him do it. I felt so bad that she was sick but it was like that didn’t even matter. I was so angry I wouldn’t answer her calls, or read her letters… Eventually Dad gave me an ultimatum: take up a hobby to channel my anger into, grow up, and talk to Mom—or go live with my grandmother in Mar Del Plata. He said _she_ wouldn’t take any of this unchristian rebellious teenager nonsense, and I sure as Judgement wouldn’t be spending all my days in the library when there was work to be done.”

“Your dad threatened to deport you?” Sam said with amusement.

“He was serious too. My aunt was on the phone to him trying to persuade him not to consult a lawyer about custody limitations when I came home with a flyer for photography lessons.”

“What I wouldn’t have given for a ticket out of here ten years ago,” Sam wondered aloud. “College was going to be that for me—I mean, Mom wants to stay here, but I could have been up and gone long before any of this supernatural crap started.”

Angela was quiet. At last, she said, “Do you wish you had been?”

Sam stopped walking and looked at her. Did he wish none of this had ever happened? He could have gone to college, got a degree, married Leah, moved away. They would’ve had a little house somewhere far away, where the sun shone every day (not every other day); two kids; a dog. He would have been safe. (Normal.) None of this vampires-and-werewolves, eternal battles and blood feuds and biannual orgy bullshit. No Emily. No pack. No Jake.

Maybe it would have happened anyway, but he wouldn’t have been a part of it.

“No,” he said finally. “I’ve made my peace with it. I have responsibilities here—and I have Emily.”

The warmth of Angela’s smile felt like a patch of sunlight had just fallen over his spirit. The feeling was as staggering as it was surprising.

“Good. I’m glad you’re here, Sam. Jake is too, you know. I’m sorry your dad left, but him leaving meant you stayed. And if you weren’t here…maybe none of us would be. Paul or Embry might have been the first to flip, not Jake, and then…”

Both were silent as they contemplated the fall-out of that.

Sam stirred first. “Would have been nice if there was an easier way to do it.”

“Mm… But then, I would have preferred that the way I ended up in the woods with a camera that night in the forest with Jake didn’t involve my mother getting cancer and threats of exile to Argentina. But what are you going to do?”

They kept walking. Sam hung back, smiling despite himself as he watched her swerve across the parking lot in search of puddles she hadn’t desecrated yet. Yes, she was kind of odd; sometimes came out with Bible-thumper maxims that made the pack stop and stare. But she made up for it by how easily she took in the reality of pack, vampires, and a permanent state of danger. The safest she’d ever been was during the four years she was studying in Seattle and Sam had been tempted to send Jacob down to her if only so that he didn’t have to listen to the incessant hormones and _moping._

But she had come back. God knew why, but here she was. Tall and lively and splashing mud everywhere. Proof that sometimes those who wandered afield _did_ return. Messing with Sam’s worldview that gone was gone, and that Imprintees and pack were all a wolf needed.

Between her and Jacob, they were well on the way to messing Sam up for good.

Angela hesitated at the edge of jumping into a puddle. Mud flecked her capris and smeared on her shins, but he didn’t think she noticed. “Sam, you’ve… you’ve told Emily all of this, right? I’m not being treated to some sort of rare, one-off insight into the mind of Sam Uley that I’m going to feel guilty for knowing about later?”

“Yes, I’ve told Emily all of this,” Sam laughed.

"Have you told Jake?"

The laugh died away. No, he hadn't. Because Jacob didn't need to know? Or because Sam didn't want Jacob to think of him as emotionally compromised like that any more. There was no hiding what he'd done to Emily, but the pack thought he'd moved past that--got a hold on it. The pack respected strength but they also needed stability.

Ugh, maybe he should listen to Emily less. She thought about what and _how_ she thought a lot. It had been instrumental in coming to terms with what happened between her and Sam-- _everything_ that happened... And she was doing so much better these days. Following from that, she did say that the quickest way to heal was to lance the boil and drain the poison.

Angela wasn’t pack. If she wasn’t pack, nothing she knew would get back to the others (unless she told Jacob, who already _had_ secrets of Sam’s he knew better than to share). She wasn’t a Quileute, or beholden to the elders in any way.

So if there _was_ something Sam wanted to get out, here was the person to tell.

“Do you hate your dad?” he said. “For leaving when your mother got sick again?”

Angela slowed her pace, a line wrinkling her brow. “I… I don’t know. All my life I was taught to forgive people. When he left, I guess… It’s like you said: I made peace with it. I can’t forgive him, even though I know I should. Maybe I never will. But I made peace with it.”

Sam considered that. Then he said, “I hated mine.”

It was an impulse, but following it came a rush of catharsis.

He didn’t tell people these things. He was the Alpha. He was calm and rational and controlled. But he went on: “He’s lucky he was dead before I shifted for the first time. The older I get, the more I hate him.”

Angela looked up as if taken aback by this sharing. The two of them didn’t spend much time alone—or they hadn’t, before two weeks ago. But now Sam was discovering he liked it. He liked being able to say what he was thinking without scaring someone, or giving someone else the idea he was weak.

The honesty was heady. Brutal but heady. “I went to see him. Just once. Before he died. Emily doesn’t know that. I’d prefer that she didn’t.”

The rain had stopped. Sam stood beside the truck in the last few drips, willing Angela to understand. “I tried to bring him back. I told him I’d been recommended for a scholarship by the school. That I was out of here in year and a bit. I told him I’d forgiven him for walking out on us.” His heartbeat thrummed in his ears as he remembered the confrontation. “He just laughed. He was so drunk and broken down by then I’m surprised he even recognised me. We fought.”

Angela stood limply in front of him, boots dangling from one hand. Her expression was remote but accepting. Sam felt she _knew_. She knew, and she didn’t care.

“I almost killed him,” he said. “I wasn’t even a wolf yet, and I almost tore him apart.”

With the words out Sam found himself… euphoric.

Angela studied him mutely. At last she said, “If I had the strength, I probably would’ve done the same thing.”

 

The clouds cleared off during the drive. The sky was, if not blue, at least promisingly light. With the scents of rain, damp earth, and Angela swirling around the cab, Sam found himself in an uncommonly good mood. He tapped the bridge of some Skyhooks song he couldn’t remember the name of on the steering wheel and didn’t complain for once when Angela changed the radio to contemporary country.

They dropped Sam’s truck off at the Blacks’ before heading out on foot. Sam left his shirt, jacket and shoes there as well, figuring that if they didn’t find Jacob he’d take another run at the perimeter and see if he could pick anything up as a wolf.

Angela wandered ahead, picking up this leaf and that, leaving him to his thoughts. He almost wished she wouldn’t: her eyes had lingered on his bare chest as they set out and he was doing his best to convince himself it was just to her habitual worry that half-dressed wolves would catch a chill.

She picked up a fern frond, a seedpod, a feather of hanging Usnea. Every so often she’d come back and show him something, as a child might. A pensive frown settled over her features. Sam took advantage of the quiet to let his thoughts wander. After a while, Angela subsided and dropped back to walk by him.

“We’ll never get there at this pace,” he teased, hands in pockets.

She stuck her tongue out again. “I’m going to see Aunt Martína for a couple of weeks. I need to stock up on rain sense-memory.” She reached out and plucked a leaf off a branch.

Sam nodded but it troubled him. He hadn’t known she was leaving. Granted, it _shouldn’t_ make a difference, since there wouldn’t be another Rut for five months, but he wasn’t sure where the three of them stood. Since that night, they’d made a nothing of it: acted like everything was the same as it had always been. The Rut made everything kind of hazy, and the pack had an unspoken pact that what happened in the haze stayed in the haze, so it had essentially faded from pack memory—or was at least ignored by common consent. (Aside from the odd jab at Jacob about sharing _everything_ with the Alpha; none of them were impolite enough to tease Angela for getting into the swing of pack life. Nor did they have that much of a deathwish.)

And yet Sam couldn’t shake the feeling that something had changed. That fact that some nights he now woke up gasping and sweaty only drove that home. If it was just the Rut making him want Jacob, why did Sam dream about him? Why did Sam relax every time his Beta arrived back safe from a patrol, even though Sam hadn’t known he was tense? Why could he taste Angela in his mouth even as he trailed after her through the woods?

The idea of the hypotenuse skipping off for family fun times while Sam sorted out his hormones from his rationality didn’t fill him with confidence.

“Your mother’s feeling better?” he asked to divert himself.

Angela’s mouth twisted. “Not really. She’s home for the moment, but… I’m worried. She had that episode last month, and then the time before that… But she insists.” She rolled the skeletal remains of the leaf between her fingers. “It’s a bad time to leave, but as Mama so stridently points out, I haven’t seen _tía_ Martína in nearly a year. Every time I go down there she says I look so pale I’m like a ghost.”

Angela said it like a joke but her chuckle was tinny. “The results are due back from the lab while I’m away anyway.” With an indelicate snort she added, “Mama promises she’ll tell me if the news is bad, but the last time she said that a doctor had to wake me up from the hospital chair I fell asleep in to tell me she had a brain tumour. She waited six months to even tell us she was sick.”

She flicked the leaf away into the undergrowth. “We’re almost there. “There’s the stream.”

Sam almost admired how smoothly she covered up her uncertainty. He could hear the ocean now, ebbing and flowing and crashing into the cliffs.

The stream between them and the coast with wide and shallow, cutting across their path to the sea this side of the spur. Angela couldn’t jump it this far down like Sam could, but there was a crossing a little further up. She jogged upstream to find it. Sam allowed his guard to drop for the first time in a week and listened to the water. It lulled him into a sort of isolated peace.

Angela’s yelp jolted him back to himself. She was sitting up to her armpits in the water upstream, hands held out stiffly like a scarecrow. A cloud of silt was flowing away from a rock to her right. With a surprisingly explicit curse, she levered herself out of the water like an old lady and picked her way to the far bank. Once safe on land, she investigated her condition, wringing out bits of water here and there.

Sam couldn’t help it, she just looked so surprised: he laughed, the deep sound bubbling up from his chest and booming through the forest.

She wasn’t amused. Shirt and capris clung to her like second skins, her vest was a sodden mess, and both palms were green-slimed where she’d pushed off the rocks. With her dark hair plastered to her forehead and her movements so stiff and affronted, Sam had seen poodles more intimidating. He jumped the brook, landing with more grace than she’d managed, and told her so.

She threw him a dirty look and then a palmful of slime.

Sam dodged, still laughing.

 

By the time they reached the open air of the cliffs she was shivering. Her lips had started turning blue. Sam would have offered her his shirt if he had one. He was about to suggest she turn back when a sea breeze slapped him in the face with a familiar scent. Leaving Angela to pick her way up the game trail up at her own pace, he jogged ahead. The clearing opened in front of him. The trail terminated at a fallen sycamore that formed a natural bench. A red hood stuck up at the far end. Well, damn: Jacob was exactly where he was expected to be. That had to be a first for this month.

Angela waddled up behind Sam and peeked out into the wind, using him as a shield. She nudged his back. “Called it. You owe me a milkshake.”

Jacob sat with his back to them against the log, both legs folded loosely to his chest with arms slung around them as he picked apart a fern bud. Sam held off calling out to him. The younger wolf was focused on something out to sea—the storm moving south from Vancouver Island maybe. Or the tanker Sam could just make out on the horizon.

There was an isolationism to the scene that struck Sam, a kind of self-assured self-containment. He wasn’t sure he liked it. Nor did he like the way his chest tightened at the sight. He hung back.

Jacob looked around before they cleared the trees. A smile broke across his face. “Hey, strangers,” he said, dropping the fern as he got to his feet. "Thought I heard you laugh, Sam."

Saturated or not, Angela hugged him, and cackled with triumph when his nose wrinkled at her clothes.

It struck Sam how different they looked now to the night they’d met—Sam following Jacob’s scent trail all the way to Forks and back, lungs screaming, instincts he barely understood howling that a subordinate was compromised (panicked, in pain). Then Angela in the Blacks’ living room, smelling of antiseptic and forest; Jacob unsteady on his feet with blood in his hair, reeking of bear mace. In the depths of his alarm, Sam had wondered if there was a father with a shotgun waiting for them outside, tallied the days he guessed the townie would wait before running her mouth to someone and the tribe had whites beating down their doors again.

But now… Jacob now looked completely at home, even as he held his girlfriend at arm’s length.

“What happened, you pick a fight with a garden hose or something?”

Angela blushed. “I… lost a fight with gravity.”

Jacob looked at Sam for confirmation.

“Bad footing in the stream,” Sam said.

“I’ll bet.”

Sam pushed away a pang at how he didn’t even sound suspicious; he trusted Sam implicitly. Even after—

Jacob’s gaze moved back to Angela as she shivered. “You know I used to know someone else who picked fights like that,” he commented, unzipping his jacket. “Take off your shirt.”

“In public?” Angela raised a playful eyebrow. “I thought we talked about exhibitionism.”

“You want to freeze,” he said blandly, throwing the hoodie over his bare shoulder, “fine by me. Just don’t try to defrost yourself by snuggling up to me. Your feet are cold enough as it is.”

Sam’s eyes caught on his pack tattoo. He shifted his weight, glad Jacob was paying too much attention to Angela to notice Sam’s compulsive swallow.

Angela’s laugh cut off with another violent shiver; she obediently unbuttoned her vest. Her fingers faltered at her shirt. Jacob moved to help. Sam remembered to look away when a sliver of green bra showed through.

Watching Jacob undress Angela – even innocently – was a little too much like memory lane. Sam focused out on the tanker. It rode low in the water; laden, he mused. Trying to imagine what it carried didn’t distract him well enough. He wasn’t sure when his feelings towards his Beta had changed, only that after Angela had gone away to start her degree the Rut had suddenly been a lot less funny. And with her back…

Jacob had stripped Angela of her wet layers without a protest from her until gust of storm wind ripped through the clearing. She squeaked and grabbed at Jacob, huddling into what shelter he provided. Sam glanced back; he could see Jacob fighting to keep a straight face as he pried her off his chest long enough to slide her arms into his hoodie before pulling her close again.

Grinning, he lifted her feet off the ground and hauled her up onto the rock between his legs. “Still cold?”

“Just a little.” Turning so her forehead rested in the curve of his neck, Angela's mouth curved suggestively. “But I think you noticed that, didn’t you?”

“I did, yeah. There go your plans for tonight.”

“Behave.” She smacked him awkwardly on the arm with the back of her hand. “Sam was looking for you.”

Jacob raised his head inquiringly. “Yeah? Did you need me for something?”

“Wanted to talk to you about the bloodsuckers. They’re getting restless. But it can probably wait.” Sam didn’t say that he’d been worried (maybe pointlessly: Jake was a big boy now, he could take care of himself) or that the rest of the pack had their own concerns. He didn’t think he needed to. Besides: given the look Angela was giving him, he’d probably said enough. Didn’t need the human worrying about him as well as ‘her own’ man.

Jacob nodded, but continued to watch him. Waiting, Sam realised. Maybe being a pack member had had more impact on Jake than Sam had fully realised. Five years ago, he wouldn’t have waited for anything. Now the other wolf was staring patiently at Sam, waiting for a sign that the conversation was over.

Sam sighed and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, man. I’ll bring it up at the next run.”

Jacob jerked his head in assent and turned his attention back to Angela as Sam left.

Sam need a run. Paul was on perimeter today; Sam could intercept. He glanced back at the rasp of cloth on stone; the couple was trailing him down the hill, Angela knotting her wet clothing into a small bundle in one hand, her other around Jake’s waist. Of course, not having the disadvantage of anything to carry, her personal spaceheater had _two_ free hands.

Sam shook his head to clear the images that called up and took off at a jog. Jacob and Angela didn’t follow. Still, skin flashed before his eyes – dark muscle and the lighter curve of hipbone. The faint tanline below Jacob's navel. A neat brown nipple taut against cotton.

He shook his head viciously to clear it. _Why_ hadn’t he looked away? A hazy memory forced itself into focus: broad back, brown-skinned and sweaty, sliding against his chest, his own hand kneading a muscled shoulder. A throat tipped back. Bared. Cartilage jutting up beneath the skin—

Sam slowed to a walk and swallowed hard, pressing the heel of his palm to his temple, trying to press the images away.

The Rut. He could blame it on the Rut. He tried to keep the worst of the Rut away from Emily: it could be rough. There could be bruising, biting—

Angela on her back with Jacob looming over her, taking her legs and folding her knees against his chest so he could get deeper inside her—

Sam’s own thought: where had Jacob learned that? Had Angela taught him to—

Angela taking a shuddery little breath like she was about to sneeze; blushing; smacking Jacob in the chest—

_“Don’t laugh at me!”_

Jacob laughing, his buttocks flexing as he rolled himself inside her—

Mindlessly, Sam’s feet carried him on.

Dark hair, finer than Jacob’s. The scents of shampoo and oranges—

_Sam twisted it around his fist; let his head drop back to the bed with a groan. From this angle he could see Jacob's fingers dig into Angela’s hips, Angela's breasts bouncing as Jacob thrust into her, feel her throat working around Sam’s—_

Jacob swallowing her moan when Sam reached for her breasts. Angela's hands on Sam's thighs, her fingertips digging into the muscle. Jacob’s chest against Sam's knuckles. Angela’s weight in Sam’s lap.

Sam stopped walking. He stood beneath a sycamore. Focusing on the coarse pattern of its bark, he drew in a deep, shaky breath. His mouth was drier than the Mojave.

He leaned into the sycamore, eyes shut. _No_ , goddamn it. He was going back to Emily. He would get this under control. The images fought him, summoning a wave of heat that rolled through his groin.

He thumped the back of his head into the tree. “Cool it, Sam!”

In his head, the three of them fused together in a tangle of teeth and skin.

A knot in the tree trunk bit into his scalp. Eyes squeezed shut tight enough to hurt, he gritted his teeth. Focus. Breathe. Same as getting the phasing under control. _Focus_. Find an anchor.

In his head, the three of them stood in Angela’s kitchen. He grabbed on to that. The matter-of-fact tone when Angela said, so: implications.

So: twice a year and ethics.

So: Emily.

Emily. Emily was his anchor. Emily with her gentle smile, and sharp toenails; Emily with her facts and figures on deforestation and tutting sounds at the local news. Emily afraid to bring up children but always watching the parents in the park with their toddlers, cuddling Claire when Quil let her go. Emily kissing his fingertips when Sam came in shaking, even when she shook herself.

Sam put all his energy into pushing the memories back. Emily’s face was now bright as a beacon in his mind. The warmth threading through his body seemed sordid and sad in its light. Body tensing up, he rallied to finally slam a mental door on the images and recoiled.

With a final thump of his head, he stood up and took off at a jog.

 _There_. His mind was clean. His intentions pure.

If he couldn’t ignore it, he’d suppress it. Emily would point out that there was a difference but he told himself he didn’t care.


	5. So You Won't Forget

After catching up with Paul and running the length of the northern boundary together without incident, Sam broke away and headed home. Paul tipped his head quizzically at the artificial calm Sam exuded for the duration of their travel but uncharacteristically didn’t press. Sam presumed that had to do with his preoccupation with a long text conversation with Rachel Black the previous night.

The run back to Emily’s was leisurely. The warm stretch of his muscles felt good and Sam wanted to languish in it as long as possible. He was within sight of the cabin before he was ready to stop running. Reluctantly, he spat his pants into the brush behind the clearing and stood up.

He almost wished he could just bypass the cabin and keep going; human form was where the troubles were. He didn’t have to see Jacob and Angela to know what they were up to right about now; it was clear as summer streams, as the smell of Emily’s cooking.

The visuals came all too easily: Jacob, teeth bared, arching (arching up against Sam). Jacob panting her name (Sam’s). Angela, her hair spread across the duvet, her laughter cutting off into a moan—

Sam grimaced and thrust himself towards the house. The memories clung to his mind’s eye, overlaying his sight like the imprint of the sun.

Emily was in the office when he pushed the back door shut and rested his forehead on her kitchen counter – their kitchen counter. He needed to gather his bearings before he went to see her. He could hear her shuffling pages, talking on the phone with someone.

She smiled when he appeared in the doorway, gesturing to an event on her calendar; she was on the phone to Jerry about the Park booth at the art festival. Sam kissed her on the cheek and murmured an inquiry as to whether she wanted him to start dinner. She nodded and waved a hand toward the kitchen, mouthing ‘by the stove’. Sam obediently went to look.

He was standing beside the fridge scowling at the box of ingredients when she rounded the corner.

“What’s the matter, hon?” she said, pointedly mild. “Don’t you remember it’s my night?”

Sam scowled at her. But he picked up the chopping board and grudgingly started chopping onions. Emily started pulling down saucepans and oil, humming to herself.

Sam struggled to maintain his scowl. He’d agreed to this, after all, in exchange for last Thursday when he’d begged her to do Old Quil’s gunpowder ribeye. But _korma_ … He’d hadn’t really had much choice in the matter, though: she’d threatened him with tacos. Homemade tacos. Yea gods, but if he had a weapon. Then – witch – she’d waved the little packet of sauce under his nose, and told him it was korma or nothing. Her night, her choice. Sam had reeled backwards and fixed her with a dirty look.

She bustled around the small kitchen in earnest now, throwing him little triumphant looks every now and again. The last time she did so, Sam gave in to a childish urge and poked out his tongue at her; Emily giggled and went back to cooking. Sam had conceded the point with ill grace.

His jobs done, he retreated to set the table. Tonight was a rare night for just themselves; if Sam guessed right, Paul would be in too much of a hurry to get back to his phone and Rachel to drop in, and Embry (next on patrol) still hadn’t gotten over the embarrassment of breaking one of Emily’s favourite plates to come around begging for food alone. Sam had the pleasure of a night with his fiancée all to himself.

So here he sat, watching her as she commanded the kitchen, basking in the peace on her face. Her gorgeous face. And her scars.

He didn’t let himself look away.

He did that. Hurt her once. It had occurred to him that if she knew about last week, she would be hurt all over again. This time, though, she would never forgive him.

Leah certainly never would—she _did_ know, and she’d wasted no time making sure Sam knew she thought he was a shitheel for adding this on top of everything else, but she was pack and she kept her mouth shut. Sam tried not to think about whether he thought that was a good thing or not.

It had also crossed his mind more than once that he might actually kill himself if he hurt Emily again. It would just be too much. He couldn’t handle hurting this woman. Unbidden, a face crept into his mind. Another human, just as fragile, just as proud. And it wasn’t the leech’s handbag.

He’d come close to hurting Angela a few times now. The night she crossed his path in the forest; the night they met; the night he showed up in Seattle during her degree looking for Jacob, who hadn’t told Sam he was going for a visit. (The panic that Jacob had been somehow abducted by that bitch bloodsucker—Angela opening the door right into the face of that emotional rollercoaster just as it hit _rage_.)

But this last time, he’d come closer than ever before. And Jacob stopped him.

Jacob would always stop him.

Sam frowned at the grain of the wooden table, tracing it with a finger. It was a sick thought, and acid churned in his stomach. Still that wasn’t the most worrying thing.

What really frightened him was that the emotion that flooded his stomach at that realisation – dousing the acid – wasn’t relief. It was something else.

“Hey, wanderer.”

His head jerked up like it was on strings.

Emily waved a spoon. “Are you going to help me dish up?”

 

– 8 –

 

Splayed naked on Jake’s bed, Angela moaned, and grasped his hair tighter. “Oh! God! Yeah, Jake, right… right there.”

Her thigh twitching against his cheek. Jake was getting carpet burns kneeling beside his bed and he didn’t even care.

He said a silent prayer of thanks that his father was away on a fishing trip and brought his fingers to bear.

Angela bucked into his mouth as she came. He rode it out with her.

Languidly, she released his hair and stroked the abused scalp. “Sorry.”

“You blasphemed.” He pulled himself up beside her.

“I’m a cursed sinner,” she said, butting her forehead sleepily against his, “and I’m going to Hell.”

Jake stroked her breast before placing a light kiss on the nipple. “But you’ll have a lotta fun before you go.” He flopped back to the pillow.

“I will. And so will you.”

This kiss was soft and chaste, bar the musky taste of her release on his tongue. Breaking away, Jake rested their foreheads together again. It was already late afternoon. Clouds were closing in again outside the window. Not for the first time, he mused on getting his act together and replacing the curtains Rebecca had thrown out as ‘so old they’re basically Elders’.

“I was thinking about some things,” he said. “This morning, after you left.”

“Oh?” Angela said. She rolled onto her side, draping an arm over his stomach.

“Yeah. You know I’ve been picking up a bit of work around the Rez. At the garage—to cover house costs?”

Some of the pack helped out at stores, went to community college, worked for the local councils, were completing apprenticeships. Jake wasn’t the only one who didn’t really know what he wanted to do with his life, but…

“Cal’s moving to Birmingham,” he said. “He’s taking his truck with him. I’ve kinda been thinking the pack needs to have at least two around for moving stuff. I mean Sam’s got his, but—I’ve been thinking maybe it’d be worthwhile getting one of my own.” He craned his neck back to look at Angela. “What do you think? It’d be helpful for the garage; more space than the Rabbit…”

If she laughed, or something…

She had her eyes closed, features slack against his shoulder. “I think it’s a good idea,” she murmured. “If you think the pack might chip in for gas and registration, it’s a great idea.”

“Thought about maybe buying Dad’s back,” Jake said, settling back on the pillow, “but I haven’t been in touch with Charlie Swan to ask. I figured something a little newer.”

“We don’t have a lot of money.”

Jake traced random patterns on her back. “Yeah, I know. But I was talking to Sam a while back, and I’ve been thinking about it. Olsen’s work-placement apprentice threw in the towel last week and Olsen’s been making noises about taking me on full time to replace him… I don’t need a _new_ truck. I went into Port Angeles to meet a guy with a Dodge he’s looking for sell for a couple of grand. Needs a bit of work, but…”

Opening her eyes, Angela nosed his shoulder. “You were talking to Sam?”

“A while ago. Couple of weeks. I didn’t—it was before the last Rut.”

“Does that change anything?”

Jake thumbed her shoulder blade. Thinking. “No. Not really.”

Angela smiled up at him, sleepy-eyed. “Okay then. You’ll work something out.” She pushed herself up to kiss him on the mouth. “We will. We always do.”

Jake smiled into her mouth. “Do you have to be getting back?”

With a sigh, Angela drew away. She trailed her fingers along the crease of his hip. “I should. Isaac’s supposed to be cooking, but you remember last time he set the stove-top on fire?”

Jake sighed and kissed her forehead. “I’ll go run the shower hot.”

“Hey!” Angela slung an arm around his waist as he went to get up, and rolled him over instead. Before he could complain, she pressed a kiss to his chest, then his stomach. Settling her mouth over the place her fingers had mapped a moment before, she licked a patch and then sucked hard.

“Jesus! Ange, you’re making it hard to leave this room.”

Her soft giggle was followed by a soothing lick and then a kiss. When she pulled her head away, a tiny livid spot showed red against the untanned skin of his hip.

Resting her chin on his thigh, she smiled. “So you won’t forget who you belong to.”

Jake touched the skin around the mark. It was warm, a little sore. He mocked a growl at her. “Gonna have to give you one to match it now. But later. I’m starving but I don’t want to have to explain to your mom that her house burned down ‘cause I was eating out her daughter.”

He got up while Angela hid her furious blush and laughter in the covers, and went out to the bathroom.

So you don’t forget who you belong to, she hadn’t said, even with this thing with Sam.

 

The drive back to Angela’s house was never long enough. Still, the light was fading, and tonight was one of the rare sit-down dinner nights for the Webers—conflicting schedules providing. He pulled up at the kerb to let Angela climb out of the Rabbit.

None of the house lights were on, which was odd, but the twins sometimes stopped off for groceries on the way home and as far as he remembered, Mrs. Weber did home communion visits with the replacement priest on Thursdays.

He left the car running while Angela navigated the wet path trying to outrun the imminent downpour. She paused on the patio and turned back.

From the top step, she was taller than him. Jake always found that funny. Grinning up at her, he kissed her on the cheek. “See you later, babe.”

Angela was eyeing the stairs with displeasure. “Uh huh. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She pushed the door open and Jake returned the Rabbit, glancing up at the sky as a few ominous drops splattered on his cheek.

About to shut the door, he hesitated.

Angela screamed just as he was getting out again. He ran for the house.

Angela was on her knees in the lounge room beside an unconscious body. Jacob could hear it breathing: a woman, limp and grey. Lucia Weber was slumped where she had fallen. Angela scrambled for the phone just. He could see trained reaction taking over from panic, her eyes glazing over as adrenaline hit her system like a drug.

Half gone with shock, she punched in nine-one-one on autopilot.

Relapse? Jacob wondered dazedly. Lucia had an operation a few months back, but…

Angela said the doctors reported they’d ‘got it all’. Lucia was supposed to be fine.

Brow creasing, he pushed Angela toward her mother and took over the phone, answering the operator's questions mechanically. No, not breathing. No, they didn’t know how long. Yes, history of blackouts.

Angela moved with a remote efficiency. Jacob recognised the state of profound shock for what it was: inside her head, ‘Angela’ was gone – probably drowning in fear and panic – leaving the volunteer Life Guard and Photography Club first aider.

He clenched his jaw. So be it.

Sirens whined in the distance. Jacob watched his girlfriend administer first-aid, and relayed another precise instruction from the cool voice on the line.

Boots clattered on the porch.

“Mom?”

Angela didn’t look up. Jake moved himself to intercept the twins, pushing Isaac towards the kitchen with the bag of groceries in his arms, giving them to Josh when Isaac failed to respond.

Isaac dropped to his knees beside Angela, his eyes locked on her face as she grimly administered CPR.


	6. When It Rains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own, because it's 3:30 in the morning

Sam spooned korma into his mouth mechanically, suppressing winces at the occasional draught of pepper up his nose while Emily chattered on about the day. After a stint in catering, she’d found a job at the Olympic Environment Education Centre, answering phonecalls and curating the exhibits. It let her give back. Slowly, she was conquering her self-consciousness about the scars. She said she barely noticed them anymore. Like Sam didn’t see her drape her bangs carefully over them before she caught it and forced herself to pull her hair back into a ponytail. Like he couldn’t smell her lies.

It made him guiltier.

She didn’t brush her hair forward in front of strangers anymore. Didn’t drop her chin when the pack youngsters let their eyes catch, or let her own eyes slip sideways when visitors well-intentionedly asked if that was the penalty for living next to a nature reserve. But she wasn’t ‘past’ them. Every now and then she still came home with her uniform shirt smelling of tears, and some days she called in sick just to potter around home, unwilling to face the world.

That slick, leaden feeling like a belly full of earthworms mixed uneasily inside Sam with a suffusing warmth when he thought of skin under his fingertips; Jacob’s sleepy grin when Sam insisted that _no_ , Sam wasn’t blushing; and Angela’s hair damp on her neck like leadlighting.

Emily tilted her head at him. “Hey, wanderer, where’ve you gone?”

There was a light in her eye as she stood up from the table that Sam hadn’t seen in a while.

“The dishes can wait, I think,” she said. Her hand extended to him across the table. The light calluses she was building up dragging boxes around the Center lit his nerves like fire where they grazed the back of his hand.

 ...

Several hours later, he was pulled upright in bed by the trill and clatter of his cell ringing itself off the kitchen table. Rain drummed on the roof. Had he imagined the ringing? Emily mumbled in her sleep, rolling over, and bunched the blankets closer. Sam kissed her bare shoulder and covered her the rest of the way.

The phone rang again. Naked and bleary, he stumbled down the ladder to answer it.

 ...

Sam walked into Forks Memorial Hospital shaking rain off his coat. Inside was marginally warmer. It wasn’t much trade for the hothouse billow of disinfectant, burnt coffee, and the yeasty-sweet smell of illness that enveloped Sam as he stepped through the doors.

Trying to breathe through his mouth, he scanned the foyer. Jacob had said they were in the ER waiting room when Sam checked in with him at seven; neither Jacob nor Angela would let Sam drive to the hospital to wait with them overnight. Watching a man escort his daughter, a spar of metal that looked nauseatingly like a construction dowel protruding from a bloody tea-towel around her wrist, to the reception desk, Sam couldn’t squash the part of him that was glad.

He hated hospitals. Plenty of cause to be in them, thanks to dear old dad and his mother's dialysis, but Sam had never gotten used to them. Maybe it was the air of resignation and ailing boredom—everyone lined up like carcasses in a curing shed waiting to be bled and desiccated, returned to their families in manageable chunks. Maybe it was the drunks with purpling teethmarks in their cheeks, or the downhill bike riders chuckling and grimacing at the same time while they plotted how long they had to favour the bone sticking out of their arms before they could smash it again.

This visit, to Sam’s reckoning, was right up there with prostate exams and conversations with new wolves’ parents on Sam’s Hierarchy of Alpha Shit He Could Do Without. But there was pack here.

Jacob sat on the furthest of the couches. Slumped, he blended with the other occupants of the waiting room, slack-faced and thousand-yard-staring. He looked worse than Sam had seen him since the redheaded bloodsucker first skipped the treaty line. Angela was asleep against his side with her arms folded on the end of the couch, head pillowed between them and Jacob’s jacket draped over her.

Jacob didn’t move as Sam approached but seemed to pull himself back together, reassembling himself like a stack of children’s blocks.

“They haven’t told us anything,” he murmured as Sam crouched in front of him.

“How long has she been in there?”

Jacob rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “Well, they brought her in around eight last night. So, since then?” He glanced at Angela. “She conked out around five. Hasn’t moved a muscle since.”

Under the lapels of Jacob’s coat, her jaw hung slightly open, a little bit of white crust forming at the edge of her mouth. She was so still. The thought crossed Sam’s mind that she’d left her body to walk through the hospital walls and watch over her mother in spirit if the doctors wouldn’t let her do it in flesh. Something in Sam’s human side wrenched.

“Lucia?”

“Still unconscious when they transferred her. They reckoned they had her stabilised before the move but that was the last we heard.”

Angela stirred. Sitting up a bit, she blinked and frowned hazily at Sam as if he was some omen she wasn’t sure how to interpret. Jacob touching her shoulder seemed to wake her the rest of the way up. The frown resolved into a weak smile. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Sam echoed.

“No news yet,” Jacob said before Angela could ask. He tried for a reassuring smile but something between intent and execution went wrong. It never reached his eyes.

Angela dropped her eyes and levered herself up, returning his jacket to his lap. “I have to pee...”

An elderly woman in a polo-shirt with the hospital logo on the breast strode past pushing a cart of magazines and newspapers with incongruently brisk steps. Sam ducked into Angela’s spot on the couch to get out of her way and exhaled forcefully. The smell of antiseptic wafted powerfully off hospital staffers like a smoker just off break; his eyes watered.

Ruefully, Jacob offered a slightly damp tissue from his pocket. “You should have been here while they were cleaning theatres. _That_ was a real party.”

Sam gratefully blotted his eyes. “Christ, it’s almost not worth it sometimes. All the advantages and still…”

Jacob nodded, blinking his own eyes unnaturally rapidly.

Up close, Sam could see they were bloodshot. The wolf sat up and whined inside him. “How are _you_ holding up?”

Jacob looked surprised for a second. “Me? Okay, I guess. Isabella Swan called a while back. Just checking in. They don’t get a lot of tumours around her, and I guess one of the doctors is a colleague of her leech father-in-law. That kid of hers is doing good, she says.”

At the mention of the welp, Sam’s jaw tightened but he said nothing. A knot of medical staff emerged from the swinging doors that cut the corridor off from the waiting room.

“Been a while, hasn’t it?”

“A few years, give or take," said Jacob. "Haven’t seen much of her since that drama with Cullen dumping her. She got weird after that.”

A short man with scrubs and a searching expression pushed through the doors and approached the couches.

“Angela Weber?”

“That’s me.” She was at the man’s elbow like he’d summoned her with magic. A paper cup trembled in her hand.

Looking only the slightest bit daunted, the man smiled kindly up at her and informed her she could go see her mother. “She’s been moved to Ward three for observation. She should be waking up any time now.”

The paper cup crumpled just the slightest bit in Angela’s hand.

The northern corridor smelled the same as the rest: antiseptic, ammonia, and illness. Sam stilled a shiver and unconsciously followed more closely behind Angela and Jacob.

The doctor led them to a quiet, grey room of curtained cells. He pointed out a bed second from the window and then retreated in a waft of old blood and expensive aftershave.

Angela hesitated just before rounding the curtain. Her back was curiously rigid. Sam empathised; he could put his reaction down to some sort of sympathetic disquiet, but truthfully the idea of languishing away in a foreign bed while his body rotted around him was terrifying on a primal level.

Drawing up to her side, Jacob took Angela’s hand and squeezed it. The smile he received was equal parts fear, gratitude, and resolution. She let go of his hand to approach the bed. Sam hung back.

In a trunk laid as straight in bed as a body prepared for burial, Lucia Weber’s brown eyes were the liveliest thing about her. They crinkled as Angela picked up the dark, still hand that lay on top of the covers. Deep shadows carved caves around her eyes and mouth. Her smile, in the depths of them, was genuine but raw—an effort.

Sam watched mother and daughter converse over Jacob’s shoulder, glad for the buffer between himself and the scene. In his few meetings with Weber senior, Sam had found her to be an uncommonly credulous and robust woman; she’d barely batted an eye at the werewolf revelation (Between her daughter’s sudden involvement with a kid from the Res and a particularly hard-to-explain incident in her backyard, Sam had felt obligated to give her at least minimal details—to prevent Jacob from screwing it up, if nothing else). Witnessing her decay felt like viewing something profane and unnatural.

He was considering excusing himself when Jacob looked back at him. The relief at Sam’s continued presence was so profound in his expression that Sam steeled himself in place, forcing a tight smile, and put a hand on his beta’s shoulder.

Despite the ashy skin and drug-dulled eyes, the woman lying there might have been Angela with twenty years of hard living and sleep-deprivation behind her. Lucia’s hair, already short, had been shorn off on one side. Traces of iodine showed through the stubble around new cuts over the months-old surgery scars. Angela’s eyes were overbright as they spoke; Sam noticed they slid around the stubble. She laughed as her mother nodded toward the occupant of the bed between hers and the window and whispered to her daughter conspiratorially.

Gesturing him closer, she smiled at Jacob. “Thank you,” she rasped, “for keeping my daughter company.”

Below the line of the bed, Jacob took Angela’s free hand and rubbed the back of it with his thumb. He laughed at a salacious addendum to Lucia’s thanks, tugging his ear. Red flushed up the back of his neck.

Angela brushed her free hand over her mother’s short hair and kissed her scalp, laughing as she pretended her own cheeks weren’t wet. “ _¡Mama! ¡No hables así! ¡Qué vergüenzo!”_

Jacob let go of Angela’s hand to offer his to Lucia when she gestured for it. Sam contemplated the alien weight in his stomach.

“Sam.”

Pulled out of his reverie, Sam lifted his chin to Lucia. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Don’t ‘ma’am’ me, _mijo_ ; I know I look terrible but I’m only forty-three. Come.” She lifted the hand not held by Jacob. “Come.”

Haltingly, Sam circled the bed and took it. Her hand was cool and papery. It weighed so little, as if she had already been hollowed out in preparation for disassembly.

“Thank you, too,” she said. “For being there for these two. They’re so young. They get themselves into such trouble!” There was a lick of good humour in her tone, a flicker of the mighty woman she was once. “It’s good they have you looking out for them.”

“I do my best, but they’re a handful.”

He was frozen up with horror at how that might sound when another doctor arrived.

“How are we doing, folks?” the doctor asked. Sam didn’t know whether to resent how heartily cheerful she sounded or give thanks for her timing.

“I’m afraid it’s bad news, this time." Surgery, at best.

Lucia’s hand tightened around Sam’s, tendons rising in her arm although the change in pressure was negligible. Angela’s eyes widened.

The scans showed a new growth. Something they’d missed in Seattle. Maybe inoperable, but she really needed to be transferred to St Peter’s for more tests. They’d move her to Seattle tomorrow if her condition remained stable. So sorry. Thought they’d licked it. Time alone to consider the options.

Angela’s torso trembled as she leant on the pillow to put an arm around her mother. Jacob’s face was stony. Lucia’s grip on his hand, much as on Sam’s, had almost driven the blood out of it.

Dimly, like hearing the echo of a sound from far away, Sam thought he felt an echo of Jacob inside him: a foreign, second-hand anguish. Was that the pack bond resonating?

Draped over her mother, Angela started to cry. Lucia released the men’s hands to put her arms around her daughter. Her eyes were dry. She stared over Angela’s head across the ward, eyes on a framed photo print on the opposite wall. Jacob sank into the visitor’s chair blank-faced. The sensation of foreign grief somewhere between Sam’s lung and legs intensified.

Sam looked across the ward. A blown-up black and white photograph hung over an empty bed. In cutting clarity, a bear stood on its hind legs at the edge of a clearcut, ears pricked, looking into the middle distance to see what threat needed to be stood against.

 

– 8 –

 

Jacob drove Angela home to collect some of Lucia’s things and pick up the twins. Angela filled the boys in as she packed a bag: toiletries, cardigan, the book half-read from the nightstand, a toothbrush and sweatpants for Angela herself—

Jacob stayed downstairs. Sliding down the wall beside the coat rack, he sat there with his knees bent listening to the quiet grief upstairs. After a little while, Joshua came and slid down beside him.

Something smashed upstairs, followed by raised voices.

Jacob started to his feet. Faintly there came the sounds of Isaac raging, and then of Angela soothing him.

Joshua peered up at Jacob from the floor. His expression was pitiful as a kicked dog’s, his eyes red as Jacob’s had been at the hospital. Sighing, Jacob hunkered down and hugged the kid one-armed.

...

Jacob ferried the twins home again once a nurse came to chivvy non-patients out for the night. He stayed long enough to kiss Angela goodbye and remind her that he could be reached any time. Her smile was needle-thin. As Jacob left, he glanced back to see her nudge the overnight bag under a chair and then crawl into bed behind her mother, wriggling an arm cautiously around her mother’s waist and tucking her face into the back of Lucia’s neck. The gritty feeling in Jacob’s eyes, he told himself, was only that he hadn’t really slept in a day and a half.

Lucia stroked the back of her daughter’s hand, soothingly. As though it were Angela, not Lucia, who was in pain and needed help to sleep.

At the Webers’, after seeing the twins to bed, Jacob dutifully fetched a dustpan and brush and cleaned up the wreckage of the ceramic dog Isaac had hurled at their mother’s bedroom wall. It was an odd, ugly little thing; a hold-over from Reverend Weber, not one of Lucia’s things. Jacob wasn’t surprised it had been the first thing to come to go.

The silence during the drive back to the Rez alone was even louder than it had been with the twins in the car, although they hadn’t made a peep except to mumble thanks for the lift. In the buzzing void, his mind kept playing the clatter of hospital cutlery, the doctor’s words, the soft sounds of Angela and Lucia conversing in Spanish as Jacob walked away.

The familiar turns of the road seemed ages apart instead of moments. Stretches of mist peeling away from the headlights seemed less like water and more like the membranes of some unnatural womb. It seemed to Jacob, with the darkness and the weird dilation of time since he drove Angela home the day before, that he was driving through a place outside of the real world. Was this Limbo? The buzzing silence seemed louder and closer than before, crowding in like the mist.

He pumped his music up as loud as he could bear. It didn’t help.

...

Sam was waiting for him when he got home. The shed light was on, Sam’s truck nosed into the workshop side. The man himself was leaning into the engine bay when Jacob parked the Rabbit in its spot.

“Stopped by to check you made it home okay and the truck conked out,” Sam said without preamble. Wrench in hand, he was tightening the screws on a hose. Jacob leant against the Rabbit to watch him. Sam was bare-chested. His shirt – a clean one – was draped over the back of a camp chair by the workbench; he’d been home. He smelled like Emily and radiator fluid. “I think one of the hoses has gone.”

Jacob said nothing. He felt drained—hollowed out and pulped, like a squeezed orange; helping Angela keep her head up all day had taken everything out of him.

“Leah took your patrol.”

That stirred Jacob. “Yeah?” 

Sam tossed the wrench onto the workbench. “Paul pitched a fit,” he said as he lowered the truck’s hood, “but Lee was surprisingly understanding. After I said it was about Angela, anyway.”

Jacob made a noise of wordless comprehension. His eyeballs felt like they’d been sanded and his head was pounding.

Sam frowned at him and came closer, wiping his hands on a rag. “You all right, Jake?”

‘Jake’. Like he’d always called Jacob that, not like he’d been the last of the pack to hold out--tried to keep some distance. He didn’t have a shirt to pull him closer by; Jacob bent forward to cover the space and rest his forehead on his Alpha’s shoulder. It smelled like Emily, radiator fluid, wet loam, and Sam. 

 _Be near me,_ was all it meant. Jacob inhaled deeply.

Sam went very still. Then, just as suddenly, he relaxed and put a hand on the back of Jacob’s head. “How long since you slept?”

“I don’t know.” _Iunno_.

Sam made a noise somewhere between a snort and a sigh. It jolted his chest under Jacob’s forehead. Rain started to patter on the shed roof.

“Come on,” said Sam. “Let’s get you inside and warmed up.” Ducking under Jacob’s arm, he put his own around Jacob’s waist.

The house wasn’t locked. No one was game to steal from one of Sam Uley’s band of hoodlums. Hazily, that seemed to Jacob something he ought to laugh about. He let Sam hold him up while they paused to kick off shoes (lest Rachael’s wrath come down on them for muddy boot prints); got his act together enough to peel off his own socks, and drape his jacket over the arm of the sofa.

Sam piloted them through the unlit living room on a combination of memory and human night-vision. His eyes were faintly luminous in the gloom. Jacob didn’t need help to walk, yet Sam’s warm solidity against his side was reassuring in some animal way. He leaned into it.

“You know you’re shaking,” Sam said.

“ ’s just my tender little heart shaking at the big, strong Alpha helping me into my house like an invalid,” Jacob joked, but his heart wasn’t in it.

Sam didn’t laugh.

Angela would have laughed. Jacob resented, in a dim way, that Sam refused to laugh.

“Shock, probably,” said Sam matter-of-factly. He changed course in the narrow hallway, backtracking to the bathroom door. Guiding Jacob in ahead of him, he perfunctorily turned Jacob’s back to the sink and pushed gently to persuade him to lean. Jacob considered: it meant moving away from the warmth, but on the other hand his body was getting unreasonably heavy. Was this how Angela felt when he deliberately lay across her and refused to move?

Without bothering to turn the lights on, Sam leant away from Jacob to start the shower and let the water run hot. It took him out of Jacob’s space. So Jacob put a hand on his hip. It wasn’t supposed to be a _come here_ or a proprietary gesture; it was just there, and warm and solid, and Jacob’s hand curled nicely around it under the empty belt loops. But when Sam straightened up, eyes glinting yellow-green in the close dark, Jacob became aware of Sam's human mouth close to Jacob’s, the width of Sam’s shoulders, and his feet between Jacob’s.

“Shower and then get some rest,” Sam said. His voice sounded strained. Apparently of its own volition, his wet hand settled on Jacob’s side. Warmth soaked through Jacob’s shirt.

Jacob's hand flexed around Sam's hip. He shifted as if to step back.

“Stay.”

Sam didn’t move, though his breathing paused. “It’s been a long day. You should sleep.”

The shower was running hot, starting to steam up the room and spattering the leg of Jacob’s shorts with damp.

Deliberately this time Jacob placed a hand on Sam’s other hip. “Stay.”

Sam didn’t resist being drawn in, and his mouth on Jacob’s was fervent. Sam didn’t do _chill_. In everything he did, there was an edge: a frenetic energy under the Zen. His teeth were sharp on Jacob’s tongue. His breathing harsh in Jacob's mouth.

He wasn’t gentle in setting their hips together or in pulling Jacob’s shirt over his head. But he smelled like pack and, skin to skin, Jacob started to feel himself warming up for the first time since seeing Lucia unconscious on the floor doused him in cold dread.

He didn’t protest Sam unbuttoning the fly of Jacob’s shorts and taking him in hand, but hissed when calluses pulled too roughly at sensitive skin.

“Sorry,” Sam muttered.

Jacob kissed his mouth and then his throat, savouring the rasp of stubble, and then carefully set his teeth around Sam’s Adam’s apple. _Liar. Quiet._

A growl rumbled up from Sam’s chest. It vibrated through Jacob’s jaw.

Applying a touch more pressure, he unbuttoned Sam’s shorts and pushed them off.

Sam didn’t say anything else as Jacob stepped them both into the bathtub. Under the spray, he crowded Jacob back against the still-cool tiles. Groaned when Jacob, taking both their hardening cocks in one hand, began to stroke them together. One of his hands gripped Jacob’s shoulder; the other flattened on the tiles beside Jacob’s head.

Jacob threw a twist into his strokes. In the gloom, Sam’s eyes narrowed, greening as he glared down at the crowns of their cocks between Jacob’s fingers like he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. His mouth opened. Jacob expected him to speak, to have to shut him up again, but what came out through the rush of water was an animal sound—too bass and chesty to have been made by a human. He lurched forward.

His forehead pressed to Jacob’s, and then his mouth.

Jacob grunted and arched his hips forward, feet edging apart. His free hand flattened over Sam’s heart. His other hand tightened around them both.

Nose to nose with Jacob, Sam screwed his eyes shut. His mouth hung slack with water streaming off his lower lip. His hand dropped from the tiles to the crook of Jacob’s upraised arm.

Jacob let out a whine as he felt his balls draw up and bucked hard into his hand.

Both came with wet gasps, quietly and without fanfare.


	7. Oranges

“Hey, handsome!” Emily’s head poked out from the office as Sam pushed the cabin door open. She had the phone in one hand, the other over the mouthpiece. Briefly she uncovered it and told the person she would call them back. She leaned her hip against the counter as Sam opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of fruit juice. “Haven’t heard from you all day. Everything okay?”

No. Sam took a hit of juice straight from the bottle, only reaching for a glass when Emily pulled a face at him.

“Everything’s fine,” he said, setting it on the bench. “Jake wanted me to stay for a while; he wasn’t really okay to be on his own.”

“What happened with Lucia?”

“Transfer to Seattle tomorrow. She’s stable for now, but they think they missed a bit of the tumour last time, or somethin’.”

“Oh God.” Emily put a hand over her mouth. “Is Angela okay?”

“She’s staying with her mom in hospital tonight.”

“The twins?”

“I don’t know. A neighbour’s taking care of them or something. Ange said she’d sorted something out."

“Mm,” said Emily noncommittally. “I’ll call Angela tomorrow and see if there’s anything I can do. There’s leftovers in the fridge if you’re hungry,” she added, already turning away. “I should get some extra stuff done so I can be available if she needs me… Hey—are _you_ okay?”

Taken aback, Sam froze in lifting the juice to pour out a glass. “Yeah. Of course. Why?”

Her brow was wrinkled but her arms weren’t folded and her fingers weren’t tapping out a rhythm on her thigh. “You just… Nothing. It’s nothing. Leftovers on the third shelf, but don’t touch the pie: it’s for the girls tomorrow.” She returned to the office, brow furrowed in the expression that meant she was already thinking three weeks in advance and plotting how to make the impossible a reality.

Sam took another swig of from the bottle, recapped the juice and put it back in the fridge, and put the glass away unused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're enjoying this, PLEASE let me know! I love kudos but I love comments more and they let me know what you like to see more of and what you're really liking so far.


	8. West of the Moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “To glimpse one’s own true nature is a kind of home-going, to a place east of the sun, west of the moon.”  
> The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthieson

Angela had been in Seattle for several days. Jacob told Sam that he’d left messages but aside from ‘ _so far okay; no news yet’_ , he’d heard nothing back.

Sam let his stride lengthen and sucked in a deep breath, feeling his wolf lungs expand like bellows. The earth was soft and yielding. The air smelled of budding greens and animal musk. The sky, for once, was blue, though he couldn’t appreciate it with these eyes. And the leech’s smell was on the boundary again.

Seth and Quil had found it yesterday. Sam and Jacob were running a long patrol, hoping to pick it up again to more clearly divine her intentions.

Rocks skittered down from the ridge Sam ran along; he felt more than saw Jacob’s snarl. Dodging the rockfall, the Beta threw a playful growl up at him and put on speed. Leah was supposed to be second body on Jacob’s run; Sam had co-opted her roster. Told he to go home and study for that anthropology final.

(It had taken time and cajoling, but she had enrolled in online university a few years back, working slowly toward a Bachelor’s Degree. Anthropology. She wanted to know why she had flipped but no other women, why there had never been a female shifter. She wanted answers. At least with her studies she was slowly learning to ask questions academically rather than physically. It was a change from economics, but Sam had never really been able to see her as a chartered accountant—Leah, cooped up in some boxy office in shoes she hated for people who didn’t deserve the money they had? Never. Not even before the change. So now when she bitched it was as often about colonialism, historical whitewashing, Eurocentrism in sources as it was about packmates, the weather, her condition. And the fieldwork would eventually take her out of La Push. Maybe to elsewhere in the country. Maybe to South America, or Papua New Guinea, or Australia. Somewhere they had women who understood.)

The net result was that Sam had a legitimate excuse to pry her off patrol and slip in to unobtrusively gauge his favoured Beta’s wellbeing.

Feeling his muscles warm, he leapt from an outcrop and bounded down a grassy slope on an intercept course with Jacob. Jacob reacted by turning directly uphill, making for the boundary proper. Sam swung his momentum in a wide arc and came up to the path just below the ridgeline only a little behind, dirt thrown up by Jacob’s stride striking his muzzle.

Grinning wolfishly, Sam put on speed. Jacob ducked into the trees. Both recognised that they weren’t really running the boundary anymore; but if they happened to cross the leech’s scent, they’d pick it up.

On a trail parallel to Sam’s, further up in the trees, Jacob launched himself onto a boulder and up off it into open air. His wolf’s body drew together and lengthened, becoming long and sleek and powerful.

Detached from any personal entanglement, Sam had a moment of appreciation for how incredible the shifters were as a species.

Then a bit of bark thrown up by Jacob’s landing hit him in the eye, and he yowled and gave chase in earnest.

 

They rested at the top of a cliff that overlooked the national park. Jacob was already seated when Sam arrived, a cross-legged human sweaty and panting as he took in the view.

Sam dropped down beside him with a punch in the shoulder. “That hurt, you dick!”

“Don’t get behind me when I’m running then.” Jacob grinned unrepentantly and swatted at Sam in return.

Sam chose not to retaliate. “Damn that was good. I haven’t run like that in ages.”

“Yeah, and not finding the she-hag’s stink’s a nice bonus. Maybe she hit the road?”

Sam frowned out at the park. The sun was setting, grey daylight fading into the gloom of dusk. Green stretched dark and damp away from them for untold miles. A hundred paths they hadn’t checked; a thousand places to hide, if she was canny enough. “Yeah, maybe…”

They lapsed into silence, each catching their breath and letting their overheated bodies cool. At the corner of Sam’s eye, Jacob studied first the terrain and then the gap in the forest far to the east that was the highway cutting through to Forks. He seemed a hundred miles away. Times like this, Sam wished he were in wolf-shape so he could hear his subordinate’s thoughts.

“Jake…” The Beta turned and Sam was surprised to find he had to direct his own gaze back to the forest to keep his nerve. “What… um. About Angela. Us. The three of us. Seems like…” He scratched behind his ear. “Seems like things are, uh, a little more complicated than we expected. What… What do you want to do?”

He finally lifted his gaze back to his Beta. Jacob was watching him unreadably. When Sam’s eyes met his, Jacob looked out to the greenery. He was quiet for a minute.

In that minute, Sam became acutely aware of their closeness, of the pinpoint touch of his knee to Jacob’s, of their nakedness and their exposure on the rockface with nothing between them and the world but the sweat on their human skins.

“I think,” Jacob began more steadily than Sam, “I’m okay with it. Surprisingly okay. It’s not… It’s not love, you know?” He glanced at Sam, who this time couldn’t even attempt to make eye-contact, though he managed a tight-jawed nod.

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” said Jacob. “You know, how I feel about Ange, how I feel about you, about us. It’s not love, what we’ve got here—between you and me, I mean. But it’s something. It’s kind of…” He trailed off and tipped his head back to examine a low-hanging knoll of cloud. “It’s kind of a… companionable warmth.”

“ ‘Companionable’?” Sam teased reflexively. “You pick that word up from your missus?”

“Shut up!” Jacob shoved Sam with an embarrassed grin. “You know what I mean. It’s like… _nice._ It’s warm, and familiar, and homey and shit. I _like_ being with you. Both of you. Human, wolf, doesn’t matter what skin. I just like being together. Maybe… maybe that’s what pack is. Maybe that’s just what it means.”

Sam snorted, amusement at the cheesiness sliding greasily against a cold clenching in the pit of his stomach. “I doubt it. I don’t get this feeling around Paul, or Embry, or Quil. Jake—” He pulled up. The nickname came so easily now. This wasn’t supposed to be a permanent thing. But here he was: assimilating it.

Jacob was grinning at him through the gloom with raised eyebrows. Sam realised he’d been silent for a full five seconds.

“Hey, old man,” Jacob teased, bumping him with a shoulder, “you’re drifting again.”

Sam put a hand against the side of Jacob’s head and shoved. “I’m twenty-eight, asshole.”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Sam swiped at him but Jacob was already on his feet, skipping backward toward the path. “Come on, grandpa!” He was off running before Sam was up—still human, bare-assed in the gathering dark with his laughter trailing back like breadcrumbs.

Sam got two hundred metres into the trees and then nearly ran into his rigid back.

Jacob snarled. The vampire snarled back from the top of her treestump. Sam hadn’t heard or smelled anything. She _was_ good.

Jacob was already a wolf. Sam phased and planted himself as well.

The vampire showed her human teeth in a grin. “Such pretty puppies to be out so late,” she crooned. Her face turned predatory. “Let’s see how you fight, dogs.”

Jacob leapt at her. She flipped off the tree in a handspring, bouncing off his back. He hit the ground on the far side of the stump hard and slid through the ferns on his side. The vampire sailed over Sam’s head and landed too-lightly on a tree. Sam snapped at her in passing.

Dangling from one hand with her feet on a broken branch, she leered at him. Gathering his strength, he sprang at the tree.

She laughed and jumped away to another tree—colliding with Jacob in mid-air.

Snarling he carried them both to the ground, burying his teeth in her shoulder. She screamed. Her fist pounded the side of Jacob’s jaw. Sam thought he heard a crack of bone.

Jacob whined, but didn’t let go. His sparring with Paul and Embry was paying off. Lurching back to his feet, Sam started toward them.

Jacob shook her savagely. Drawing back her arm, she hit him again. This time Sam definitely heard bone crack. Jacob was thrown off her, blood streaming from his jaw. White flashed in her shoulder. Sam reached for her.

Growling she pushed off the ground and spun in the air, passing over his head as he rushed by.

She dropped heavily, landing on hands and knees.

Sam whipped around.

Expression venomous, she reached into her shoulder and dragged the white thing free. Her fingers dripped blood black and thick as molasses. Sam growled and launched himself at her again. A flick of her wrist flung both blood and white thing into his open mouth and she was already up and running.

Sam gagged and spat. _After her_ , he snarled at Jacob mind to mind. The other wolf scrambled up and took off with jaw healing. Sam squinted down at the tooth on the leaf litter smeared with blood, venom, and saliva. Foul bitch.

He spat again and gave chase.

They lost her when she looped back to the cliff and hurled herself off it.

Panting, they hunkered at the edge and glared out into the darkness, scouring the trees. Nothing.

Jacob’s mind shuddered against Sam’s, and then he spoke. _Should we go down?_

_No. She’ll be long gone._

Jacob narrowed his eyes against the gloom hatefully. _We had her._

 _Next time,_ Sam assured him, bumping shoulders. Turning, he peered into Jacob’s mouth. _Has it grown back yet?_

Jacob’s brow pinched. _No. And it really freakin hurts._ He scanned the greenery. _She’s fast. From the look of that blood she hasn’t fed for a while, but she was still fast. Should we tell the leeches she’s back? It’s their mess to clean up._

Sam growled deep in his chest. _It’s our territory. They’re gone; they should stay gone. We’ll double patrols. Stay vigilant. When she comes back, we’ll be ready._

Jacob cocked an ear. _What makes you think she’ll come back?_

Sam’s laugh was a dark _hukka-hukka-hukka_ sound in his chest. _They always seem to. We’ll tell the others. Start scoping ambush spots._

_Might be tough if she can jump like that and we can’t._

_Maybe_ , Sam replied thoughtfully. _But there’s the ravine. If we run her in there, and have wolves waiting at the top for when she tries to fly up and out… Come on. We need to tell the others._

 

– 8 –

 

Angela had been haunting her mother’s ward until Karen Yorkie arrived yesterday to visit and forcibly removed Angela from hospital grounds. Exhausted and mollified by the hospital’s promise to call her as soon as any decision was made, Angela had allowed her godmother to bundle her into the car and drive back to Forks.

Eric had showed up the next morning as Angela was clearing spoiled food from the fridge. He had orders to get her out of the house and distract her. He wouldn’t let her do the laundry, or start scrubbing the coffee stain on the carpet where her mother had dropped a mug when she blacked out. Together they went and did the grocery shopping, delivered a box of odds and ends for the upcoming church jumble sale, and then collected a folder of wedding invitation samples for Katie from Port Angeles. (A week before, Eric had proposed, and Katie – he reported – hadn’t even let him finish the question before kissing him and agreeing.)

Presently Angela and Eric sat in the window booth they’d occupied every Thursday in grade school, when their mothers brought all four children to the café after school to do homework whilst the women caught up.

“You really like it?” Eric asked again, checking that the photo on his phone showed the ring on Katie’s finger to best advantage. “She wanted something custom, but we don’t really have a lot of money – student loans suck ass – so we compromised. Priya Simone – from shop? She’s got this shop on Etsy. She agreed to do it for a reduced rate if we let her do whatever she wanted.”

“It’s gorgeous,” Angela reassured him. “I like the acanthus leaves.”

“There’s this Near Eastern funerary stele that Katie loves,” Eric explained, a little mournfully. “Kinda…. grim. But it’s Katie’s all-time favourite bit of ancient art, so…”

“The ring’s beautiful, Eric. And I don’t think it’s grim at all. In ancient times, grave markers celebrated the life and virtues of the departed. That’s a really lovely sentiment—to carry that kind of love and joy around with you forever.”

“You think?” he said, sounding relieved.

“Yeah, I do. You guys are pretty unconventional. Why should your rings be traditional?”

“True that,” said Eric reflectively, dragging a fry through the remains of his aioli. “You know she’s looking at universities in Germany too, so when I go over we can be students together?”

“That’s awesome, Eric!” Angela tried not to think about the artificially cheery note in her tone. “Your dad’s come around to the whole international student thing then?”

Eric made a face. “Yeah, he still doesn’t understand why I can’t just go to college here and then be a Council man like him, since I still want to do PolSci—but…” He paused with the air of someone about to make a big reveal. “…he’s agreed to pony up the cash for our first semester. All of it. For _both_ of us.”

Angela’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. “Uncle Grant has? That’s… wow. Wow, Eric, that’s huge. I mean, not as big as you and Katie getting engaged, but still!”

“I know,” said Eric with a dizzy grin. “He says it’s his wedding present to us. Katie’s folks are hiring the whole function centre out at the Park, and she’s got relatives flying in from, like, Germany… He doesn’t want to be shown up, I guess.”

“That much money will make a huge difference,” Angela agreed.

Eric frowned at her as she picked at the tabletop with a troubled expression. “How much is the insurance going to cover?”

She glanced up at him helplessly. “Not enough. And I can’t keep taking shifts off work to be at the hospital… The p—the guys from the Res want to help but… ” The café was suddenly oppressively hot, the stagnancy and complications of the last few days, weeks, months stifling. She had to get out. To do… something. She didn’t know what. But she had to do it _now_. Her eyes burned and her lungs tightened.

Eric slipped out of his bench and around to hug her tightly. “It’ll be okay, Angela,” he said earnestly. “Your mom’s really popular and everyone in the church will help out as much as you need. It’ll all be okay.”

Wrapping her arms around his waist, she hugged him back. “I’m not sure it will be. But thanks,” she said wetly.

He squeezed once more and then released her. “What do you say we get out of here? I’ll get this.”

“Sure.” She gathered her things and gratefully stepped out into the night while he went to pay the bill. It was raining mistily; the cool and damp on her face soothed her. Under the eave of the café, she slipped her coat on and took a few deep, measured breaths. She felt calmer outside, and steadier after the day’s time-out. Tonight she would start the laundry, and tomorrow bring the boys home and catch up on the household accounts—but for right now, she could just take a moment to process.

“Angela!”

She peered into the gloomy drizzle of the carpark. A figure approaching beneath a bright blue umbrella resolved into Emily, snugly wrapped in an orange parka with a knit cap pulled low on her forehead.

“I thought that was you,” Emily said kindly. She lowered the umbrella and shook raindrops out onto the pavement. “I’m meeting a friend inside. How are you holding up? Jake said you were in Seattle with your mom.”

Angela had to wade through surprise and exhaustion and not a small measure of panic to find her tongue. She hadn’t seen Emily since the barbeque. “I’m… I’ve been better. I hopped the transport ambulance to Seattle with Mom.”

“How is she?”

“She’s… Honestly? I have no idea.” Angela was taken aback by how the words just plopped out. “Nobody does. I… The doctors are still arguing about the best course of action. They’ve got her stablilised, but if chemo and surgery both failed to get the job done…” She trailed off, eyes prickling again.

Emily’s eyes pinched sympathetically. She touched Angela’s arm with sweet camaraderie. “I know the way it goes. Two of my uncles went to cancers when I was a kid. Doctors, nurses… nobody ever seems to know anything until they know everything.”

Angela nodded, words sticking with worry and guilt both. “They said they’ll call me when they have a decision.”

“And waiting feels worse than the actual news,” said Emily with a sympathetic nod. “Well, you know if you ever need anything, Sam and I are here for you.”

Angela considered her. Emily looked well. Happy. How could she possibly know anything about the trio?

Oily guilt brewed in Angela’s stomach. The first time had been the Rut. That was understandable, if reprehensible. But Sam had come back. Angela and Jake let him. They had done things. Things that made her skin warm and her stomach clench sickly at the same time. She – they – had done things that she could see and feel and smell even now as she faced Emily’s guileless compassion.

“I know you are,” Angela said sincerely. Nausea closed her throat.

Emily seemed to think it was just emotion. With a smile imploring forbearance, she squeezed Angela’s shoulder and then rubbed her arm briskly and said goodnight.

Eric doffed an imaginary hat to her as he emerged from the café, jacket in hand, and held the door open for her. “That’s Sam’s girlfriend, isn’t it?” he said to Angela as the door closed. “What did she say?”

“Just checking in about Mom,” said Angela faintly. “I told her we don’t know anything yet.”

“Yeah and isn’t that a freakin’ kick in the pants with everything you’re paying in private health insurance,” Eric said darkly. He stepped off the stoop into the drizzle. “Come one. Let’s get you home.”

His phone rang just as the car doors shut. It was Katie; Eric apologised to Angela and promised to be brief.

Angela sat beside him in the car, not really listening to the fiancées good-naturedly arguing about when the stationary samples had to be at Katie’s and why it was really necessary to go all the way to Port Angeles for a few scraps of paper. Instead she looked through the café window to where Emily and another woman had taken seats at a table just beside the booth. Watching them touch cheeks, chatter and laugh, Angela couldn’t quiet the part of her that was simultaneously uneasy about Emily and gripped with an unshakeable craving for the next time she could go home, push her boyfriend down on the sofa, and wait for the inevitable second pair of hands pulling up her shirt from behind.

This was dangerous.


	9. How Deep It Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _It doesn't hurt me._   
>  _You want to know how it feels._   
>  _You want to know that it doesn't hurt me._
> 
> _You don't want to hurt me,_   
>  _but see how deep the bullet lies,_   
>  _unaware that I'm tearing you asunder._   
>  _Oh there is thunder in our hearts, baby._   
>  _Is there so much hate for the ones we love?_   
>  _Tell me we both matter, don't we?_
> 
> _Running Up That Hill_ \- Placebo

The house was dark and chilly when Eric dropped her home. She'd turned off the heating when she returned to the hospital and the neighbours still had the twins. The quiet lay heavily; settled like debris at the bottom of a lake. If she didn't disturb it, she might just be able to mentally pick up the pieces of everything that had been thrown askew by the last week, examine them at leisure, and put them carefully back in place without stirring anything else.  
She turned the thermostat up but didn't send for the boys.  
Jake arrived as she was loading the washing machine, Sam close behind. "We met that redheaded vamp again. You need to come to the Res."  
They seemed, she reflected as if from a great distance, far more comfortable in proximity than she remembered. How much had changed since she went to hospital? Unbidden, Emily's face rose in her mind, together with Emily's hand on Angela's arm so kindly. She shied away from the memory.  
"Did you hear me, Ange? That suckhead's back. The others are on the way to get Emily and the other Imprintees. You need to go someplace safe too."  
"I heard you," she said dreamily. "I just put the washing on."  
Jake stared at her as if confounded by this lack of reaction and stumped off to pack a bag for her. Another bag, she thought. Another move. Another disturbance.   
"Billy's home," Jake called as he took the stairs three at a time. "He'll keep you company while the pack patrols. Can you leave the twins here? Dunno know how they feel about sharing a bed, but Rach and Becca's room's an office now and there's only the inflatable."  
"They're…" Angela frowned, searching through the flotsam adrift in her mind. She had known earlier.  
Things clattered upstairs. Jake wasn't listening anyway.   
Sam stood by the kitchen door watching her. As her wardrobe door banged open upstairs, he shifted at last. "Angela?"   
His hand settled on her arm where Emily's had been.   
Angela took an automatic step back. Things snapped into focus. "I'm not leaving the twins here," she said quietly but firmly. "Okay. We'll go. But first I want to shower and lie down."  
"Ange, it's not safe. The vamp… You can sleep at-"  
"In my own bed." She said it so sharply, promptly. Wholly unlike herself. When she lifted her eyes, Sam look taken aback. Stung even.   
She began to explain-to apologise, to soften. Then she stopped. It was too much. She was too tired, too raw. Hollowed out.   
She slipped past him and went up the stairs in silence, too tired to cry.   
Jake had almost finished sloppily folding clothes into a soft bag when he realised she was standing behind him. He straightened.  
"Babe?"  
She stood motionless as if she had forgotten what she came in for. Her eyes fixed on a little ceramic giraffe her mother had bought for her in a zookeeper phase Angela didn't remember having.  
"Ange," Jake said softly. He reached for her.  
"She's not coming back this time," Angela said hollowly. She twitched, eyes misting. Then she started to cry in earnest.  
A floorboard creaked as Sam moved up to the doorway. He didn't come any nearer to where Jake was holding her as she shook. Maybe he just wanted to see; maybe he just wanted to be close.  
She wanted him close. God help her, but she wanted him close. She wanted her family-her pack close. Without lifting her head from Jake's shoulder, she stretched a hand back.  
After a moment, warmth enveloped her and another set of arms looped around them both. He joined the huddle without ceremony, and pressed close like a wolf in winter. Angela tilted her temple to his. 

\- 8 -

Angela had lain atop the covers of Jake's bed unmoving since the last time Sam looked in. Jake had been asleep beside her in wolf shape since she lay down. With the curtains were drawn, they seemed barely alive in the red shadows: a Renaissance tableau.  
Outside the twins hooted and hollered, running wild with Seth and the 'spears' they had made with him-whittling saplings into points with their father's fancy unused outdoor knives, then fire-hardening the tips in the fire pit. Angela hadn't told them why they needed to go; Jake had told them a sleep-out might be the best thing to take their minds of their mother. Seth seemed thrilled to have people his own age around. The twins' shouts and war-cries thrilled to play with knives and fire instead of doing their Trig homework.  
Leah and Paul were patrolling. Sam fully expected to break up a fight when they got back, but they had found an aggressive, territorial kind of equilibrium lately. It actually made Sam a little uneasy: if the Terrible Two ever joined forces (the Dynamic Duo being Quil and Embry, who were slightly more manageable now that their respective career paths were incrementally impressing on them the mouldings of adulthood) there was no telling what sort of collateral damage they might inflict.  
Jake emerged human and sleepy-eyed as the sun went down. Sam was sitting on the sofa watching football with Billy, trying to maintain the appearance of a normal Thursday night. Two knuckles tapped the back of his head to tag him in. Jake took his place on the sofa when he rose.  
Angela now lay asleep on her side. She stirred uneasily when Sam entered, muttering and catching hair that had come loose from her braid in her mouth. Jake's spot on the covers was rumpled; Sam lay down in it. The residual warmth against his skin felt like sinking into a physical sensation of 'pack'. After a moment, he hooked a finger under the hair in Angela's mouth and drew it free like he remembered seeing Sue do for Leah when she was in a fevered sleep during her first transition.  
Angela stirred and woke. Her smile to see him was unsteady.   
"The twins are outside with Seth," Sam told her quietly, "if you want to go see them."  
Angela blinked heavily. "I'm not ready to go outside," she murmured.  
She didn't seem ready for anything. It was a far cry from the usual solid Angela who was cautious, meticulous, but ultimately tenacious.  
Sam hesitated and then rationalised that pack instincts had worked before. Lying flat on his back, he stretched an arm above her head. "C'mere."  
After a moment, she lifted her head onto his shoulder and tucked herself along his side. Sam let his arm settle around her.  
They lay like that, listening to the thin sounds of the TV, the hoots and hollers of young voices outside. Sam guessed the boys had moved to throwing practice. He could hear, if he listened, the whistle of projectiles flying toward the forest; the thud of points burying themselves in the peaty mast.  
Angela's breathing was deep and even. She felt very similar to Emily against his side, though ganglier. Her socked toes brushed his ankle, not calf.  
Time ticked by without meaning. It wasn't dark, but it wasn't light, and they could have been there for ten minutes or an hour. Her body was warming to his, even despite her cuddling with Jake only a little while before. Her breathing was becoming less steady too.  
Sam dredged himself up from the meditative haze he had sunk into to comment on it.  
"How did you feel when your mother died?" Angela murmured.  
Sam stopped. Thumbing her arm below the sleeve of the t-shirt of Jacob's she swam in, he considered and then answered honestly. "Unsteady. Lost. I hated that she was leaving after we survived my Dad's damn ugly exit. But I hated seeing her in pain, too.  
"But then," he added pensively, "I only had t' take care of me. …it's okay if you're angry at her. Your brothers… Doubt anyone'd blame you."  
Angela shifted, resting her curled fingers beside her face. "I'm not angry. Cancer is an act of God," she said, sounding for the first time in a long time like the churchmouse Jacob had brought home to the Res all those years ago. "Acts of God are… when it's His plan, there's nothing to be done." There was a trace of bitterness there, but resignation too. She had washed her face before they left Forks, before the twins could see, and sat in the back of Sam's truck with them dry-eyed. Still her breathing hitched now. "His will be done."  
"Mostly," Sam said to keep the conversation moving, "I regretted not my Mom how much she meant to me when she was still present enough to understand what I meant. How much I loved her. Ange, you won't have that problem. I've seen you and you mom, and your brothers together. Your mom knows how much you love her."   
Over her head, he traced his eyes over the adhesive remains of glow-in-the-dark stars Jake had stuck on his ceiling in the shape of constellations as a kid and imperfectly removed as a teen who thought he was too cool for that. "Making sure someone knows they're love," Sam said," is the best thing you can do for them when there's nothing else to be done."  
Jake's mother had helped him measure out the constellations. After her funeral, Jake had taken them down alone.  
Angela raised her head to study Sam and then kissed him chastely on the mouth. There was, he reflected, nothing sexual in the gesture. How strange: such a feeling.  
"You have a good heart, Sam."  
Sam smiled at her. Taking her hand from his chest, he kissed the knuckles. "Guess it runs in the pack."  
She looked at their joined hands like a foreign object. Her breathing was jumping again and the muscles in her side tense. She tipped her head back to look at him.  
She was so close, and in so much pain. It shouldn't have been Sam lying there with her talking about this; it should have been Jake. But in Sam's experience, Jake ever knew what to say in these situations either. And there was Emily. More importantly: Emily.  
Unwilling to kiss Angela and make it something it shouldn't be, Sam rested their foreheads together. She closed her eyes. Sam could have sighed with relief. He closed his as well. Gradually, their breathing slowed and then synchronised.  
Outside, a projectile hit a rotting target with a dull thud, meatier and more solid than the wet sounds of spears flying point first into the ground. Someone had hit their target. A joyous holler half a second behind confirms this.  
Angela moved her head against Sam's, just a fraction. He kept his eyes closed. Their hands still lay tangled together on his chest.  
She made the move for him, pressing their mouths together. She gripped his hand more tightly. When Sam opened his eyes, she did likewise. She blinked at him without haste. Without expectation. There was water on her lashes but her gaze said she didn't want in any covetous, demanding way. That was as deep as Sam could fathom. Further, his reckoning was murkier. He didn't know what they were. What they were doing.   
Scratch that. He did know: they were pack.   
He kissed her back. The sounds of the boys play-hunting outside seemed to triple in volume; the wind in the trees was the rush of oncoming waves. Angela smelled of Jake's shampoo, Jake's shirt, of salt on her cheeks and the herbal tea she choked down before retiring.  
"Show me I'm loved?" she breathed into his mouth.  
Without letting go of her hand, he rolled up onto his elbow. Angela arched her back so he could push Jake's shirt out of the way. There was no bra beneath it. Sam wasn't sure why he expected there would be other than a vague notion that women wore bras all the time except for when showering; he's been convinced of this as a teenager and all Emily's laughter and free-wheeling hadn't broken him of it.  
Emily. He buried the thought in the taste of Angela's sternum.   
Angela's hand on his head was uncertain. Her breathing stuttered. The nipple before his eyes trembled. Sam took it into his mouth and the shudders steadied into a deep inhalation. Her hand settled.  
It tightened on his hair when he rubbed his nose into the dip of her hip. He had to reclaim his hand to unknot the ties of her sweatpants - also Jake's - and hook his fingers into the waistband. She bridged her hips to give him space to pull them off. Sam slid down and off the bed to find his angle. His knees ground into the thin carpet at the foot of the bed.  
To distract himself, he kissed a line down her inner thigh before running a thumb gently over her cleft and spreading the lips. She wasn't wet yet, but she was getting there. When he looked up, she was watching him down the length of her body, dark eyed. She still seemed uncertain. Bending one of his knees for leverage, Sam draped her legs over his shoulders and went to work.  
Angela bit her lip to keep quiet, and then her fist. The t-shirt bunched under her armpits. She didn't bother to take it off.   
The TV blared in the living room. One of the boys ran shrieking past the house.   
When she came, she let out a broken sound. Despite himself, Sam catalogued it-the way it ran through his nerves like an impulse. The rawness of it. He replayed it over and over in his head. It struck him deeply and he couldn't decipher precisely why.   
He rested his head on her heaving belly.  
The door opened before they recovered. Sam tensed but it closed almost immediately. The bed sagged. A hand brushed over his shoulder. Jake took up a prone position beside Angela, his leg against Sam's shoulder. Nudging his head into the crook of her neck and shoulder, Jake reached out and touched a finger to the little pool of sweat that had collected in Angela's navel. She kept her eyes closed, breathing regularly.  
After a moment, Sam pulled himself up on Angela's other side, adjusted himself in his pants, and lay down.

\- 8 -

Jake left first, pulling the door. Sam followed him out and ducked into the bathroom.  
Angela emerged only after a short while, redressed, with her hair completely undone. She looked at home in Jake's clothes, even though the hems of the sweat pants were rolled a few times and the sleeves hung nearly to her elbows.  
She sat on the sofa with Billy, facing him, her legs drawn up. He changed the channel to some nature documentary. He didn't seem the slightest bit perturbed by what may or may not have happened beneath his roof. Sam wondered how much he suspected, if anything.   
Jake made more tea and brought a mug each to Angela and his father before curling up himself in the old armchair. From there, he could reach out to Angela and stroke her back absently as they watched the documentary. Sam didn't know how much any of them were absorbing. The flush had faded from Angela's face, and she'd moved more fluidly than before; she seemed more alert, more present. More prepared to take on the world, even as she curled into a ball on the Blacks' sofa and drank herbal tea in tiny sips, holding the mug like it might get a wild idea and attempt escape at any moment.  
Outside, Paul shouted at the Seth and the boys to get their fire under control. Leah shouted back at him not to yell at her brother. They were coming in from opposite sides of the property. Was it too much to hope that they'd managed a sort of team work?  
Musing on that, Sam left the cosy domestic scene and went to get their report.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still unbeta'd so all typos and fuck-ups are mine.
> 
> As always, kudos are much appreciated, comments are adored. ¡Buenas noches!


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